


Burned

by notenuffcaffeine



Series: Adaptations [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But he tried, Foster Care, Gen, Hunters Being Assholes (Teen Wolf), Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Prequel, Scott is not a good friend, Sentinel Senses, Stiles Breaks From the Pack, Stiles Stilinski Has a Bad Day, cliffhanger resolved in crossover, major character presumed dead, prequel to be resolved in a crossover, that lasts for months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenuffcaffeine/pseuds/notenuffcaffeine
Summary: After Scott secretly helps Gerard Argent's Master Plan along in a way that results in disaster, Stiles has to figure out 1) how to stay out of Eichen House, b) keep a roof over his head, and 3) how to not go insane and/or kill his former friends when all their stupid attempts at helping him go wrong.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Isaac Lahey, Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura, pre Sterek - Relationship
Series: Adaptations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768660
Comments: 42
Kudos: 295
Collections: Unforgettable Crossovers





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *~*~*
> 
> This is a prequel to Drafted, so the story will be resolved there.  
> Canon compliant for s1 and some of s2, up until s2e8: Raving, at which point things start switching up a bit...
> 
> *~*~*

The first volley was unexpected and would have been impressive to the blindsided officers, if there were any officers in the station still alive to be impressed. Automatic gunfire to keep them away from the windows, C-4 on the exterior wall of the holding area to make it look like some kind of jail break. Lots of brilliant light and absolutely devastating noise and sound. Nobody expected the flash-and-burn approach the hunters had taken to cornering the kanima. And Derek. Allison had made it very clear she was looking for Derek.

In hindsight, it shouldn't have been surprising that the Argents would opt to set things on fire.

And Stiles had been half paralyzed, dragging himself through the hall to hide from the kanima until Derek hauled him up.

"Help! Help is good!" Stiles said. He was still struggling to keep his limbs under him, just so much dead weight even for a werewolf. He felt jelly where there should be muscles. But he felt his toes.

"What do you think I'm trying to do? I could leave you here," Derek hissed back at him.

"Okay, let's not do that, but can we get my dad-" Stiles broke off on a cough.

"Kinda got my hands full with one of you," said Derek. "Once you're out, I'll come back."

And Stiles accepted that because he couldn't feel his knees so he didn't have much choice in the matter, and it was hard to breathe through smoke. They were close to the garage exit when Derek stopped. He didn't give warning, just planted a hand over Stiles' mouth and held them back against the wall beside a storage locker near the corner.

"Scott," rattled a crumbly voice, muffled by something. Stiles could barely hear it, but the voice was loud enough that he didn't question the hand over his mouth.

"What are you doing here?" Scott McCall's voice replied. Stiles felt relief for a few seconds but then worry. Scott’s voice didn't sound like he was planning to kick Gerard Argent's ass. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this!"

"Trust me, I'm aware of that," said Gerard. Stiles choked on a cough, surprise stealing his breath rather than smoke. _What the hell?!_

"I've done everything that you've asked of me," Scott kept talking and Stiles had to keep listening even though he couldn't actually believe what he was hearing. He had so many questions for his best friend, and Scott kept piling more on with every word. Derek wouldn't let him interrupt, though, and they stood hidden, listening. There was random gunfire all over, and smoke in the air, and they stood hiding from Gerard and Scott.

"I'm part of Derek's pack like you wanted. I've given you all the information that you wanted," said Scott. "I even told you Matt was controlling Jackson..."

"Then leave him to us. Help your friends. Leave Matt and Jackson to me. Deal with your mother," said Gerard. A nice, friendly, order to a soldier. There was a clatter and the squeak of tennis shoes.

"You dropped this," came Scott’s voice from the other hallway.

"Good boy," said Gerard, talking to a dog. "Now. Go!"

And Gerard Argent walked by the end of the hall, toward the garage, with a gun in one hand and a scarf in the other against the smoke. He paused to open a metal case and pull out a pill from it, swallow it dry, and then start moving again. But he didn't see Derek or Stiles. Derek looked out after him, waited, and then glanced at Stiles, a scowl on his face.

"Can you walk yet?" He asked. Stiles wasn't in the mood suddenly to spin positives and maybes. He couldn't feel his knees, he couldn't walk, period.

"No."

"Well, the garage is out. Which way now?"

"Lobby."

Derek did not like that answer. "You mean where there's six guys who just blew out all the windows with automatic weapons, waiting in the parking lot?"

"The garage might only have _two_ guys?" Stiles offered. Derek heaved an annoyed sigh.

"Can you walk yet?"

"You really think that answer changed in the _five seconds_ since you last asked it?"

"Well, our way out had to. I am _this close_ to carrying you," said Derek. But he didn't. They struggled along, pausing at offices as they passed looking for windows to climb through. No luck. They got to the garage, and Stiles triumphantly balanced on one leg as Derek checked through the window on the door for threats. It seemed safe, so he collected Stiles, who could now gimp along on one leg, and they made it out into the garage. Stiles pointed toward the side door that he figured would be closer and safer and Derek helped him cross the room between the cars and equipment.

They limped between a SWAT truck and a scene commander's SUV when something stung Stiles's neck. A moment later, Derek suddenly stopped and shoved Stiles to the ground. "Kanima!"

Stiles rolled under the truck as Derek staggered a few feet, belatedly trying to get away from the slash across the back of the neck.

"Derek!" Stiles yelped on a reflex as he saw the creature's tail sweep down to stab at the paralyzed werewolf. Gunfire chased the kanima away, and Stiles edged further under the truck to hide as boots ran toward their location. _No no no n_ o...

An arrow thunked into Derek’s side and Stiles startled, his own hand over his mouth this time to make himself be quiet. The boots showed up and dragged Derek out from between the cars. A smaller set of boots showed up and suddenly Allison was kneeling over Derek with a long knife in her hand held resting against his throat. His vision blurry, Stiles tried to move again but he still couldn’t feel his left leg and there was no way he could take on three hunters and Allison. And she didn't seem quite in the mood to listen to him, either.

"Allison! No!" Chris Argent shouted. Allison paused.

"He killed Kate! He bit _Mom_!" she yelled at her dad.

"Your mom is fine! That's why you need to back off. This is not _for_ _you_ ," said Chris. "Not yet."

Allison seemed annoyed by the answer and went back to trying to convince herself to cut Derek’s neck with a knife as big as her arm. She was drawing blood and _oh no this was bad_ and _ohmygod_ were stuck in a loop in Stiles' head.

"Allison! Wait!"

The last person Stiles expected to hear from was Gerard then. He watched as Gerard waved Allison back and the girl stood up and stepped aside. Blood dripped from the knife and Derek wasn't healing yet, probably delayed from the kanima poison. Gerard knelt over Derek then, a creepy old man being ten times the creeper compared to Allison and her knife. He touched Derek’s face like he was wiping away dirt or blood and Derek bared his teeth. Gerard smiled and looked up toward Allison. He held his hand up and a moment later the knife was back, threatening Derek all over again.

Stiles was stuck watching, hiding, helpless, as Gerard broke the arrow shaft off where it stuck out of Derek's side. He didn’t flinch because he couldn't feel it. But his expression changed. He looked scared. Gerard raised the knife so Derek could see it again, held it against the side of his face near his ear.

"What are you doing?" Scott’s voice suddenly yelled. The door into the station slammed shut and Scott ran toward them. The hunters tensed but nobody moved toward him. Gerard looked up at him.

"I _told you_ to leave, Scott," said Gerard.

"Yeah, well, I thought you might want to know the fire department is on the way," said Scott. " _Everyone_ has to leave. And I still can't find _Stiles_."

Suddenly Gerard attacked Derek, twisting his head and threatening him with the knife. Derek opened his mouth, his teeth his only defensive weapon, and Gerard shoved the side of his arm into his bite. When he pulled back, he was bleeding and smiling, and Derek looked horrified and sick. He turned his head and started retching, making Gerard back off. Stiles started pulling himself out from under the truck as the hunters all started backing off from the sick werewolf on the ground. Scott heard him and crouched down to help.

His version of helping was to make him stand when Stiles really wanted to get to Derek, so Stiles accepted only enough help to get out from under the car and then crashed back down to shove Derek over on his side. He was choking on whatever he was throwing up. It looked like blood. Blood and... black. Stiles thumped at Derek’s back, trying to help however he could, even though he wasn't feeling exceptionally capable of anything at the moment.

"Grandpa..."

There was a distressed sort of horror in Allison's voice and Stiles looked up at Gerard to see the man bleeding, and smiling about it, triumphant. "This, Allison. This is how you plan. The long game. To _win_!"

"That doesn't look like winning," said Scott.

"This was all you wanted?" Stiles shouted up at him. "You _killed_ people, for the bite? What about your code?"

"This is what he wanted, because he's sick," said Scott. Stiles stared over at Scott, wondering just how much his friend knew that he had never bothered to tell him.

"Unfortunately, science doesn't have a cure for cancer yet... But the supernatural does," said Gerard, looking to Allison and Chris.

Stiles was angry and confused, half distracted by Derek trying to sit up when he was still paralyzed. He looked over at Scott. "Then you're a werewolf, you should have done it for him. All he needs is the bite. The station-"

"No. Had to be Hale," said Gerard. He still had the knife, and the upper-hand, surrounded by confused hunters. Derek glared up at him, his hand barely hanging on to Stiles' arm as Stiles tried to help him stay up.

"So he can kill me when he's cured the cancer," Derek said, quiet from the way whatever he had thrown up had scorched his throat. "Cure himself of the bite."

There were black lines across Derek's jaw, dark somehow staining around his mouth. Stiles pulled at him to get him sitting up more, as if that had a chance in hell at speeding up a second dose of poison in a few hours time. He looked over at Scott.

"You knew?"

"Oh, I think he already knew, didn't you, Scott?" Gerard asked, a hard smile in place as he shrugged. "He knows that the ultimate prize is Allison. Do this small task for me, and they can be together. That's how this has always worked."

Stiles couldn’t look at Scott then, because it was there, on his face. He had sacrificed other people to work this game for Gerard. Even if Scott didn't trust Derek, there was no reason to sell him out to the Argents after everything they had already done to the guy and his family. Stiles tried to stand up, not sure he would be able to, but he looped Derek’s arm over his shoulder and tried to push up against him to get them both on their feet. Gerard watched them, amused.

"And where do you think he's going?"

"Away from here before the fire department calls in the feds," said Stiles. "If they haven't already." He looked up at Gerard then, staggering back a step as he saw the man's face in clearer light. "You should get to the hospital."

The old man's arm was bleeding, but the red blood had turned black. And his nose had a line of red-black oozing down around his mouth. He smeared it across his jaw and looked at the mess it left on his hand. "What in hell-"

Scott took advantage of the confusion and took Derek from Stiles, then half dragged him away from the hunters toward the big doors out to the parking lot. Stiles followed after them, unsteady but at least able to drag the leg that hadn't quite come back yet. They got as far as the gated driveway out to the street before Derek shoved away from Scott in order to force a shift. It didn't fully work, but it was at least enough to get some more of the toxins out and he was able to climb the fence on his own. Scott had to help Stiles. But they made it out. And Derek disappeared by the time Stiles hit the other side of the fence.

"Did you get my dad out?" Stiles asked Scott, staggering back to crash onto the sidewalk. He looked back at half the station blazing over the cement wall that surrounded the back of the lot. Things seemed fuzzy and blurry and he was tired. It wasn’t the kanima poison but something was making him loopy. Scott shook his head.

"I didn't see him."

*~*~*

The solid walls of the sheriff’s station had collapsed right over the very spot Stiles had last seen his dad locked up in the jail cell. Melissa said she had slipped the handcuffs on the bench and run a few minutes before the explosion, and Scott had been able to get her outside, but Stiles' dad was stuck in the cell. No one had keys.

That had been three days earlier, and Melissa McCall was fresh from the hospital with the final report.

And she was crying. That wasn't a good sign. Although, she had spent a lot of the last few days crying, and not-talking to Scott, so maybe it was just a new layer. Stiles didn’t talk to Scott much either, but he had stayed on the couch because Melissa asked him to, and because Scott didn’t want Stiles to be on his own after the craziness at the sheriff’s station. But hey, someone had found Matt's body in the creek, so Jackson's kanima problem was temporarily on hold until he found a new master. Scott didn’t take credit for the kill, but he called the mission a success and turned his brainpower to fixing Jackson whenever it wasn't firmly stuck on Allison.

Scott had fucked up bad, but his friend still worried about him, so Stiles went with it. Because he didn’t have any other options.

Because Scott had called in the Hunters that blew up the station.

Scott knew he had pissed people off. And he knew it was going to have a fallout on Stiles. And he had done it anyway.

Stiles still wondered, somewhere in the back of his foggy brain, what was his friend’s _first clue_? The fact that it was the Hunters who had blown up the station? Or the fact that Stiles hadn’t seen his dad in three days, and he had no family left to protect him?

Scott was supposed to have called for help. Gerard Argent wasn’t _help_.

In the end, there wasn’t much to be said. The report from the coroner was inconclusive, but the body had been crushed. The blood type was the only thing there for them to check, forensically. The wallet and badge and dog tags had all survived the rubble. And Melissa had been tasked with telling him that, because the station only knew how to get a hold of him through her. She even brought the evidence bag with his dad’s things home for him.

Stiles had spent days in a fog, even his body lied to him, letting him walk and talk and move only to be sluggish and uncooperative about it. The kanima toxin was slow enough to leave his system, dragging like sludge. He was pretty sure he had been shot by one of those hunter darts at some point, too, because he remembered passing out in the parking lot, but who knew anymore. Nothing seemed to work quite right, until he reached his hand in the plastic bag and pulled out the scratched up dog tags. His dad’s name, raised and imprinted along the thin metal, rolled along his thumb. Stiles’ eyes stung and his hands shook as he dropped the bag. The chain in his fingers stayed looped, when he had meant it to stay in the bag.

Melissa stopped pacing and sat down to rub his shoulder.

“You’ll be okay, Stiles. I promise,” she said. “You can stay here with us. We’ll figure something out-”

Stiles stared at the name on the tag in his hand, his breath hitched. He shook his head. He couldn’t stay with them. He didn’t have any place to stay. Except his house. He needed to go home. Until something kicked him out. He just needed to _stay home_. His dad would come home if he waited long enough. There was a surreal impression to everything around him and the logic in his head made perfect sense. He had the dog tags, so his dad would be around for them. Stiles’ fingers traced over the photo taped into the rubber edging around the tag. He knew the photo by heart, didn’t even have to look at it. His mom’s smiling face as she held a tiny dark-haired baby. His dad loved that picture. He wouldn’t leave it behind.

“I gotta go home,” Stiles said. Melissa nodded and squeezed his shoulder.

“Sure, kiddo, we can go over there,” she said. She reached over and looped the chain from the dog tags over Stiles’ head to hang at his neck. Stiles still held the tags. He used to steal them from his dad all the time in elementary school. But not since his mom had... died.

Stiles dropped the tags and shook, trying to figure out if he could still walk. He needed to go. Melissa was rambling something about getting Scott to help them go back to Stiles’ place and get his things. Maybe Scott should drive. Maybe Scott was better off. She still tripped over saying her own son’s name.

“Make Scotty talk to you,” Stiles told her. He couldn’t look at her though. He stood up. “Just... make him tell you.”

Stiles made it to the door, where his backpack and jacket were scrunched on the floor. He shoved his dad’s wallet and badge in the pocket and zipped it back up. The zipper fought with him and he screamed at it. He won and got to the door. It opened in front of his face and Stiles stepped back just in time not to get smacked by it.

Scott stared at him. “Stiles! Are you okay?”

Stiles blinked. What the hell kind of question was that?

“My dad’s dead,” he said. He saw makeup on Scott’s shirt collar and the smudge of lipstick on his cheek. He ground his jaw and shoved the door open to let Scott and Isaac come in the house to get the hell out of the doorway. Scott went pale.

“Stiles... I’m- Are you sure?” he asked. Stiles huffed a laugh, not at all amused.

“The coroner told your mom. I got his badge,” he said. “Now get out of my way. I wanna go home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Scott. Stiles raised his hand, ignoring that it was shaking, and pointed them into the house.

“Get out of my way.”

“Stiles-”

“No!” Stiles snapped. “My dad’s dead, Scott! How’s _Gerard_ doing? Huh?”

Isaac shoved Scott out of the way then, some kind of recognition there. They were both in the Orphan Club now, so maybe he got it. Maybe he was helping. But he got Scott out of the way and Stiles moved past them, out onto the porch and then the driveway. Scott tried to yell at him, but Isaac kept him back.

Stiles kept walking. He took his phone out of his pocket and took the case off of it, dropped it on the ground as he walked. Then he slammed the unprotected phone down, too. It cracked and bounced along the sidewalk ahead of him. Stiles kicked it around like a hockey puck for a few steps until it ended up in someone's lawn.

Then he just kept walking. He would regret that later. But just then, Stiles couldn’t feel anything. He didn't think he wanted to. And there was nobody who would be looking for him who he wanted to talk to anymore. He couldn't pay the phone bill anyway.

Stiles was sixteen, nearly seventeen, with no job, and no way to pay his way in the world. He needed to disappear before he got tossed into foster care and never made it out. He was three days behind and should have left the day they reported his dad MIA. Then he could have asked Derek Hale for pointers on how to be an orphan. The guy had done alright. He had to know something that Stiles could use.

Because Stiles' face was streaked with tears and his eyes were blurry, and because he had committed the cardinal sin of thinking Derek Hale's name, a car pulled up alongside him on the street. Stiles wiped at his face and edged further away. It wasn't just a car, it was an SUV. That looked a lot like Allison's dad’s SUV.

Shit.

Stiles took off at a dead run. But his system was still screwed up and when he tried to jump off the curb, he tripped and sprawled out on the pavement. The SUV screeched to a stop with the front bumper inches over Stiles' head and his backpack shoved over painfully. Somebody dragged him out from under the car and hauled him up. Something stabbed him in the neck and Stiles felt all Kanima-woozy all over again.

*~*~*

Stiles woke up because someone was yelling at him. Two someones. He recognized their voices. Boyd and Erica. "Derek?"

He squinted, but his eyes didn't want to open up. He could barely breathe; he was trying to but breathing was just too slow. The yelling kept going, higher pitched and louder, and Stiles kept trying. He finally managed to open his eyes. And then rolled to his side and forced his lungs to work. He managed to focus on the sounds and tried to look around to find them. He was dizzy but he saw Boyd and Erica's faces at the same time as he heard their voices, which made things make a little more sense. They were standing across the room from him, arms up in the air like they were tied to the crossbeams along the ceiling. And there was blood. Why were werewolves bleeding?

Standing up to get to them was a whole different problem. Stiles nearly fell right back on his face, but he rallied, tried again, and pushed himself up enough to reach the wall. He stumbled once, blinked and made himself slow down, and followed the handholds he could find. Eventually that meant he was hanging on to Boyd, but the guy didn't seem to be mad at him for it when he pulled the gag out of their mouths.

"Stiles! Wake up! You stopped breathing!" Erica said, her voice high and rushed. She was worried. Stiles blinked at her. What did she think he was doing, standing there _napping_ on them? He tried to reach Boyd's wrists and threatened to give up because he was freakishly tall which meant he had long arms. But he eventually got his hand around the binds... and then fell back as the cords _bit_ him.

"We _told_ you!" Erica said. "Electric!"

When had they told him? _Was_ Stiles napping? Shit.

He had to pick himself up off the floor again and then blinked owlishly around the room. He followed the electrified leads wrapped around their arms down to the control box and stared at a bunch of dials and switches that made no sense. Guessing, he turned things down, and was rewarded by his friends-who-casually-threatened-to-kill-him visibly relaxing and breathing big full breaths. Then Erica yelped and Boyd jerked his head, catching Stiles' attention. He looked up in time to see the doorway light up the stairs down into the basement and he stumbled away from the electric controls so he wouldn't get in trouble.

He stood a few feet away from the newbie werewolves and wished he could disappear because he wasn't steady enough to stand between hunters and wolves without falling painfully on his face. He saw boots tromping down the stairs and got suddenly dizzy and fell down, back on his butt like a toddler.

Stiles didn't recognize the guys who were first down the stairs, and he found he could kick at them if they tried to stand too close, since he was sitting down and had his hands braced on the ground beside him to keep the world from spinning again. He did recognize Gerard Argent, though. The man looked normal, but his mouth seemed stained black. _Shitshitshit_.

"Stiles. You're awake, good," said the old man.

"Kinda," said Stiles, blinking up at them. "Not really."

"Enough to tell me where to find werewolves?" Argent asked. Stiles tilted his head back and looked around at Boyd and Erica. Their secret was obviously out. He raised his hand and pointed at them.

"There," he said. They were just baby werewolves and they were hurt, so hopefully they didn't do anything supid like go after hunters when there was only one way out of the room. Or heal up, because the electric current was too low now, and that was a thing that could happen, and then they would all three be in trouble.

Gerard crouched just out of kicking range, which Stiles was okay with, because he didn't want the creepy old man any closer than that anyway.

"I am looking for Scott. And Derek Hale," said Gerard. Stiles shrugged.

"Last I heard, you and Scotty were tight. You probably know better than I do, really. Especially right now. Isn't there a game tonight? Scott’s playing," Stiles just talked it out because there was no way he could outsmart anyone when he was thinking through fog, and way too dizzy. He tried to nod and regretted it. "Yeah. He's at school."

Gerard frowned, confusion on his face. Apparently he wasn’t expecting such easy answers. He glanced up at the men with him. "Was this boy drugged?"

"Which time?" Stiles asked, interrupting. He blinked, focus blurring. "Because the answer is definitely yes."

Gerard smiled at him, because he was a creeper, and then he stood up again. "Make sure he doesn't wander off and get hurt then. We'll talk when the boy is more coherent."

Stiles didn't like that order, first because it meant more time in the basement, and next because he didn't want to talk, coherent or not. Third, because the two bulky hunters in their boots walked over and hauled him to his feet, only to drag him to the old wall heater in the room and handcuff him to it. First off, that was too hot, Stiles didn't like it. And he was dehydrated enough as it was. Ignoring entirely that he needed to help Boyd and Erica.

But he could take a nap propped up against the wall next to it if they left him alone. He was okay with that part.

He had just closed his eyes when a heartbeat later, someone was tapping his face. With their open hands. Okay, that was more like slapping. Stiles blinked to see Erica in his face, hissing at him to wake up. He was quite confused and tried to dodge but the wall was there and the heater was hot.

"Stiles! Wake up!"

"Can't. Tired," said Stiles.

"You have to wake up! We have to run, go-"

"He'll be okay, Erica! Let's go!" Boyd said nearby. Stiles nodded. Good idea. Go away. He might have still been asleep because he dreamed that Erica kissed his cheek and told him to be okay.

It was hours before Stiles woke up again, and he knew it, felt it, like crawling across sandpaper. When he woke up, his _entire existence_ was sandpaper, and he absolutely hated it. But he could breathe again, and think, outside of a headache, and the distraction of his tongue being made of cotton and stuck in his mouth.

He looked up and saw that, sure enough, the werewolves were gone. He hadn't dreamed that. He was exceptionally pissed off about it, but only at the stupid drugs and handcuffs. After all, he was mostly-guaranteed survival just for the fact that he wasn't a werewolf. Sanctimonious bigots were useful in their self-righteousness like that. Stiles didn't have to worry about the other two now, and maybe they went for help. Maybe.

But help didn't show up. Gerard Argent did. And he was pissed at the broken window up high on the wall. And he was pissed off in general. Something about stealing his kanima. _Killing_ it. Stiles couldn't understand his ranting. And Stiles didn't have any answers for him because he had been passed out. He woke up the rest of the way real fast when they hauled him away from his slouch by the wall heater and lashed his wrists to the chains over the crossbeams like they had the werewolves.

" _Not_ a werewolf! _Not a werewolf!_ " Stiles said quickly when the hunters wrapped the electric leads around his wrist. Just one. But Stiles was partial to breathing and in general not being _electrocuted to death,_ too.

"Where are they?" Gerard demanded.

"How the hell would I know! They left me here!" Stiles shot back. It got him smacked in the face, like an actual smack that stung. The old man had power. Like a werewolf. _Oh_ shit.

"Where would they go? Would they go to Derek?"

"I don't know! Nobody tells me anything!" Stiles was saved by anger, because he really just wanted to break down and cry. Adrenaline was trying to kick out the drugs, though, so he tried to kick out when the old man got too close again. The wires around his arm zapped him and Stiles yelped.

And that was how it went until Stiles did break down crying. He had been punched in the face a few times, and the ribs, and the stomach, and kicked in the legs. He was going to be all bruises. And the little jolts from the electric wires only made him paranoid and scared on top of it. And because they were assholes, they drugged him _again_ and locked him up to the heater. Stiles didn't really care because it meant he got to sleep it off again.

He woke up enough to realize he was being dragged away somewhere, but not enough to fight back for it. He got shoved in a car and passed out. Then dragged out of the car and dumped in a dirt pile with leaves and gross stuff he didn't want to think about that stung his nose to smell.

He woke up again when someone touched his face. Careful, not causing harm.

"Stiles?"

Stiles blinked open his eyes to confirm he heard someone there at all. "Hey, Derek, did you get-"

"Got Erica and Boyd, yeah," said Derek. "Now we got you. Get up."

Stiles swore he got up, but he was pretty sure Derek just carried him.

*~*~*


	2. Chapter 2

Derek walked into the hospital feeling blind. He didn't know what he was doing, other than asking for trouble. He was taking a gamble no matter what he did. But Stiles was drugged stupid and _still_ refused to stay with Scott. And Derek didn't want to deal with the blow up that would happen if he showed up at Scott’s place with a drugged stupid Stiles. The only way around that was Scott’s mom, since the local news had reported that the Sheriff had been killed.

"Is Melissa McCall available?" Derek asked the nurse at the desk. "Scott asked me to stop by..."

His favorite part about growing up was seeing how fast he could get away with things just by flashing the right smile. The nurse frowned at her paperwork and then smiled at Derek and then was suddenly flustered as she excused herself to go check. A minute later, Melissa McCall was running around the corner, only to stop and frown at Derek herself.

"You aren't Stiles."

"No... when is the last time you saw him?" Derek asked, cautious and suddenly rethinking his choices. Why was she _expecting_ Stiles in a hospital?

"Yesterday, he left the house after Scott got home," she replied. She crossed her arms. "And who are you, anyway?"

"A friend of Stiles' and Scott’s," said Derek. And then he lied. "Stiles came to me for help. The hunters got him last night."

"What?" Melissa said, eyes wide. Derek hesitated again.

"The guys who blew up the sheriff’s station," said Derek, not sure suddenly how much Scott’s mom knew. But she definitely knew about the station. They had seen each other there, even if she didn't know who Derek was. That was probably for the best, anyway, given Scott didn’t seem to like him. Recognition dawned and Melissa put her hand over her mouth.

"Where-"

"I've got him, he's safe, in my car, but I wasn't sure if it was safe to bring him in," said Derek. Melissa rushed forward and grabbed his arm.

"Take me to him, _right now_ ," she ordered. Derek led the way.

"Don't tell Scott," Derek told her. "Stiles won't tell me what happened, he just wouldn't let me take him to your house."

"Why?" Melissa asked, offended and hurt by the news.

"I don't know. I was hoping you would know," said Derek. He unlocked the Camero's passenger door and crouched in the doorway to get at Stiles' eye level. "Stiles? Can you wake up?"

Brown eyes blinked a few times and Stiles pawed at his seat belt before reaching for Derek. "Derek, help-"

"Yeah, buddy, we got help," said Derek, unconsciously dropping back to the way Stiles talked to him lately. "You okay to walk?"

Stiles nodded and Derek glanced back at Melissa. The nurse looked horrified. "Where was he?"

"I found him in the preserve, just dumped on the side of the road," said Derek. He reached across to let loose the seat belt. He was lying again, because he had followed the hunters there from the Argents' place. _Watched_ them dump Stiles there. There was no _finding_ , just a lot of _waiting_. It had been over twelve hours since Erica and Boyd had told him what happened, but they couldn't exactly storm the Argents' basement to get Stiles out. And he couldn't exactly say that to Melissa McCall.

Stiles pitched sideways trying to get out of the car and Derek had to help him. They got him to his feet, but Stiles was more asleep than with it. Derek gave up then and scooped him up. "I got it."

Melissa led the way back into the ER, barking for help getting a new patient sorted. Derek was swept along with it until someone found a place for him to put Stiles, and then he was kicked out. Melissa told him to wait but Derek was nervous about it.

He pulled out his phone and texted Scott.

_ Argents had Stiles overnight. With Boyd and Erica. He's at the hospital with your mom now  
_ Dont know what to tell her  
_ told her it was the guys who blew up the station

And, against his better judgment, he sat down to wait, nervous. He knew it was going to look bad that he brought the guy in, but it would look ten times worse if he brought him in and then disappeared. So he waited, like Melissa told him to.

Scott started blowing up his phone five minutes later. Derek didn't bother to reply. He had already passed along the important stuff. Scott just wanted to yell and Derek didn't have anything more to add. He didn't know anything more than Scott did.

Scott showed up a half hour later to get in his face in person.

"What do you mean by _that_? Allison's _dad_ wouldn't hurt Stiles," Scott said. Derek rolled his eyes.

"Maybe not, but _Gerard_ would. Erica and Boyd had to watch them kick him around before he got them out," said Derek.

"Why didn't they get him out then?"

"He's been drugged, Scott! Even we can't carry a comatose body out of a hunter’s basement window and make it more than fifty yards before we’d get shot!" Derek hissed back at him.

And Scott settled down then, even though he wasn't happy about it. His mom showed up a half an hour after that, looking anxious and sick.

"He'll be okay, but you can't see him," said Melissa. "He's sleeping now. And Children's Services is on their way. And the... the sheriff’s department is sending someone over to get a statement from you."

Derek backed off a step. "I can't give a statement."

Melissa crossed her arms. "Why not."

Derek looked to Scott, glaring at him to make him explain to his own mom. Scott let him hang for a moment before finally speaking up.

"Mom... the guys who did this would do worse to Derek if he talked," Scott said. "We'll just say I found him. I found his backpack yesterday, too, about a block away from the house. They busted his phone."

Melissa went pale. "Is this because of what happened at the game last night?" she asked. "The man who broke into the house..."

"Yeah, Mom. It's my fault," said Scott.

Derek watched the pair of them and shook his head. Scott was playing with fire and Derek had tried to warn him so many times. He dug into his pocket. He handed his burner phone to Melissa. "Look, Stiles needs a phone. Especially if CPS has him now. Give him this. Don't let anybody take it from him."

She nodded and tucked the phone into her pocket. "Don't you need one-"

Derek held up his iPhone. "Mine still works. I can get another one for a backup. Just get him a charger for it. He's gonna need that."

Scott got that puppy-eyed look on his face then that always confused Derek. It was like the kid understood and appreciated when Derek tried to help him. And then he still turned around and stabbed Derek in the back trying to get in good with the Argents. It wasn’t like Derek didn't know exactly what _that_ felt like. Allison was even older than Scott, though not as much older as Kate had been. It was a bad situation all around, and Derek was too stupid to stay out of it. It was _that_ look on Scott’s face that always made Derek stick it out.

All the same, he pointed a finger at Scott. " _You_ need to understand, this is what you get for _dealing_ with Gerard. Your _family_ gets hurt. Do you get that yet?"

"I didn't have a choice, Derek-"

"Yeah, you did. _Stiles_ didn't. Your mom won't, if Gerard doesn't get what he wants. He'll just burn everything in his way," said Derek. It just so happened that this time, the thing he was going to want eventually was Derek’s neck. He glanced down the hall toward where he knew Stiles' room was. The kid was lucky this time, but he had already lost everything, so that was debatable. Derek looked back to Scott.

"I'll help you how I can, Scott. But no more games. You're not pack, fine. But you're still in over your head with these guys. And sticking together is still the only way to make it through."

"I can handle it. We got Jackson back, didn't we?" Scott said, squaring his shoulders.

"What? _We_? Peter and I did that. Because I didn't have _anybody else_ to back me up. Because _Argent_ had Boyd and Erica, and _you_ had Isaac," said Derek, slightly winded from the sheer gall of the sixteen year old jerk. "And _incidentally_ , Argent had _Stiles_. But apparently you knew that if you found his stuff. _God_ , Scott. You're going to get the guy killed."

Shaking his head, Derek turned his back on them both and made his way out of the hospital. Stilinski was screwed if he stuck it out as the only human in Scott’s circle who wasn't a hunter. But it wasn't like Derek’s pack was strong enough to be safe there either. He knew he had lost Boyd and Erica, especially after the hunters attack. The only reason they told Derek about Stiles was because Erica didn’t want the kid hurt any more. They were still leaving when they healed up. With Isaac on the fence, and Peter lurking at the edges, the best Derek could do for Stiles was leave him a phone.

*~*~*

When Stiles woke up some time that week, he didn't know what day it was, but he knew there was a social worker in a pantsuit telling him the bad news all over again that his dad had died. The city had planned his funeral for a few days later, and Stiles was expected to be there if he was well enough. The city - both the government types and the citizens who cared about such things - would expect him to be there, but nobody wanted Stiles to stress himself further if he didn't feel he could do it.

And, oh, by the way, she mentioned, Stiles was on a suicide watch because no one knew what happened to him. He had shown up loaded with some form of a hallucinogenic, the doctor's best guess being a club drug he had tried to overdose on, and that was _concerning_. Stiles tried very vocally to make it clear he had been jumped and even (technically) hit by a car, but the social worker said his injuries were consistent with someone who had overdosed and wandered around high as a kite for twenty-four hours.

Because the drug they found in his system was a hallucinogen, she politely refused to take his memory of events as fact. But she did point out that Melissa McCall had brought him clothes and things to read, so the lockdown wouldn't have to be entirely self-help therapy classes. Stiles bit his tongue on pointing out every adult within a five-mile radius could take a long walk off a tall roof-top.

Except Derek, because he wasn’t an adult yet. And he snuck past the nurses to visit before Stiles got moved to Eichen. Stiles tried to talk to him but he was still groggy and didn’t remember much of it other than he asked Derek to give him the bite, and the jerk refused, and Stiles ended up crying literally on the guy’s shoulder. And Derek let him. Even gave him what probably passed for a hug, in Derek’s weird world of bad attitudes and people trying to kill him all the time. He didn’t exactly tuck Stiles in or anything, but he left after Stiles fell asleep because Stiles didn’t remember seeing him leave.

Stiles’ seventy-two hour safety-watch in Eichen House let him out just in time for his dad’s funeral, but it didn't let him go far. He was turned over to the care of some new person who had volunteered to take him in. He didn't know the family, but he would try it, just because he refused to go anywhere near Scott. Trying to help Scott had gotten his dad killed, gotten Stiles beaten up by werewolves and hunters, and drugged _way too many_ times, and now sent to foster care by way of the psych ward. It wasn't like Stiles could tell anyone at Eichen about the werewolf hunters his best friend the werewolf had decided to negotiate with instead of avoid like the plague. The Truth would Not set him Free and would have locked him up forever in the crazy-bin with orderlies who got really handsy if Stiles didn't follow orders fast enough.

His dad's will was six years old, and the family members that were supposed to be asked to take care of Stiles had already died. The only really useful information in the will anymore was that his dad wanted to be cremated. So the funeral had a weird looking urn at the dias, surrounded by floral arrangements and people Stiles didn't really know other than by their title with the city or a few of them their last name.

Melissa was there, though, and when she offered to walk with him, he didn't tell her _no_ , and she latched on to his arm and probably kept him walking when his feet just wanted to stop. Stiles followed the riderless horse up through a sea of law enforcement officers, (some from as far away as Washington,) as part of the city's ceremony, and he tried to keep his eyes from leaking because the social worker had tried to cover his black eye with makeup.

Stiles blamed the overdose less than a week earlier, but nothing felt real. It bumped up to surreal when Lydia Martin showed up and latched on to his other arm, and then refused to be seated anywhere other than next to him. She was Lydia, though, so it didn't cause a scene, it just somehow mystically happened how she wanted it to, and Stiles was saved from sitting squished between strangers at his dad’s funeral.

He didn't remember much about the funeral later, except that Lydia didn't let go of his hand. He didn't know the people who spoke, he didn't have to see a dead body, the flowers made his throat itch, and the big framed photo of his dad was a few years old. Everyone in the auditorium wanted to pat him on the shoulder and offer condolences, and Lydia murmured thanks at them as Stiles just nodded mutely. It was apparently a very big deal when an elected Sheriff died on duty. Stiles was very detached from the entire thing.

Eventually the lines of people ebbed slowly away and Stiles was left to the people who called themselves his friends. He was too exhausted to correct anyone. He saw Derek there, lurking on the edges, actually dressed appropriately in black for once.

The Argents were there at the end. All of them. They had to be, because the department knew them as Good Guys who kept the armory up to date. Allison and her dad walked up to pay their respects and Stiles glared at the floor, but when Gerard showed up, Stiles turned and left. He was shaking and angry and would not be forced to shake the man's hand. Stiles left Scott to deal with his newest friends and followed the nearest batch of people out the door. Lydia and Jackson both followed him, and Derek met them at the door, catching Stiles' arm to steer him away from the parking lot the crowd was dispersing into.

"Are you done here?" Derek asked, watching the area around them as much as Stiles. Stiles nodded.

"So done. _Very_ done. Find me a _goddamned fork-_ "

"Where are you staying?"

Stiles shrugged. "Foster care. I dunno them."

"Did they find you a phone charger?" Derek asked. Stiles nodded. It was just a basic phone, nothing fancy, and anything plugged into the wall could charge it. Derek held out his hand. "Let me see the phone."

Stiles handed it over. Confused was a semi-permanent state for him now, and he preferred it to the angry panic that had been rattling in his chest since he saw Gerard walking toward him. Derek took the phone and typed a few numbers, then closed it and passed it to Lydia. She snatched it quickly and put her number in. It was cute they thought Stiles didn't have it memorized already, but Stiles didn't say anything.

"If you need anything, if something happens and you need out, you can reach me," said Derek. "Fosters can suck. And I don’t know what Scott’s doing, but you should stay out of it. Gerard... goes after the easy targets. And it doesn't get any easier than staying with strangers."

Stiles took the phone back from Lydia, his head ducked as he slipped the lifeline back in his pocket. Derek patted his shoulder then, taking his leave with a quiet "Be careful." He disappeared before Stiles had even turned his head to look for him.

For a minute, Lydia stood watching Stiles, worried. Jackson even looked a little worried, but he was probably still strung out from were-creature stuff, whatever he was now. Lydia had emailed Stiles coded updates every day because somebody told her he was on suicide watch, and he had been able to set her straight in one emailed reply when he finally got his laptop back, but he still didn't know what the story was with Jackson. And for the sake of his sanity, he didn't want to know.

Stiles' foster-whatevers found him after that, and he had to go. He didn't want the Argents to see who he was staying with, thinking he could protect himself and them better that way. But they passed Chris Argent in the parking lot, and when Chris nodded a greeting, both of them returned it. Like they knew him. Like he knew them.

Stiles couldn't sleep that night.

*~*~*

At night, the Tysons' house was locked up tighter than a bank vault. The windows were locked and rigged to the home security system alarm. The front door was padlocked, twice, and once the alarm was armed, the door opening would set it off, wake up everyone, and bring in the cops. Once the house was locked up for the night, there was no getting in or out, and Stiles was stuck inside, dealing with a four year old who thought he personally was put on this Earth to serve as a jungle gym. After three days, Stiles was permanently exhausted.

In the broad daylight, however, it was relatively easy to just walk out the front door unnoticed. Mr. Tyson was at work, and Mrs. Tyson was either chasing the four year old, cleaning up after the dog, or gone on errands. And the house was left unarmed when Stiles was left behind. So he thought up a fair story about accidentally locking himself out when he went outside for some sunshine, and just kept walking.

Stiles knew mostly where he was and it was only about a two-mile walk to Derek’s place. And Stiles needed some kind of help. Some tie to sanity. Because he was losing it. He was angry. He still hurt. And he wanted it to stop. Derek had gone through it already, he had lived to the old age of nineteen somehow, and he wasn’t dead yet despite the Argents' collective best efforts. The guy had figured out how to make something work. Stiles wanted to know how to make it work, and he wanted shortcuts because otherwise he had a likelihood of death.

He was tired and not exactly okay when he did make it to Derek’s place. He wasn't crying, but his face would probably tell on him for the fact that he had cried a couple of times on the way. Maybe it would work to win his case. Maybe this time Derek would change his mind and help him do what Stiles needed to do. Last time had been when Derek snuck into the hospital to see him before he got moved to Eichen and that was different. Everything was different then.

It had been a week into his new life now and Stiles had answers he didn't like, a whole new set of reasons to ask for Derek’s help. He knew it was a snowball's chance in hell, but Stiles was going crazy with paranoia and pain and grief and he needed something. Maybe Derek could see that and maybe it would work this time. Maybe the Cubs would win the World Series.

All the same, he pounded on the door. It eventually slid aside, and Derek stood there, his usual unreadable self, intimidation mode on full.

"I can walk here from the foster place," Stiles reported.

"I see that," replied Derek.

"I need a favor," Stiles said. Derek didn’t seem overly eager to help him, but he stepped aside.

“Is the phone dead or something?” he asked, waving Stiles in. Stiles jumped to get inside before the man changed his mind.

“No. I just needed to not... be there,” said Stiles.

“Are you going to get in trouble for it?” Derek asked, eyebrow up in judgement.

“Depends on when Mrs. Tyson gets home from errands with the brat,” replied Stiles. Derek flared up a little at the name.

“Tyson?”

Stiles physically sagged as he stared at him. “Oh come on. Don’t tell me you know them.”

“Tyson’s probably a common enough name,” replied Derek. Stiles glared.

“It’s not exactly _Jones_ , either. Do you know the name or _not_?” he asked.

Derek nodded. “I’ve heard it. It wasn’t exactly carved on the arrow or anything, but I’ve heard it.”

Giving up, Stiles turned and faceplanted into the couch. “I’m not going back.”

“Yes you are.” Derek moved over and shoved his legs off the armrest so he could sit there. Stiles sat up and made room but he still slouched back in a barely contained sprawl off the other end.

“Right. I left my stuff there. But I’m not staying there,” said Stiles, staring at the ceiling. “They know Chris, I saw them do the Nod at the funeral. And _you_ know the name. I’m gonna end up back in the basement, and then I’ll end up back in Eichen and I can’t, man. I just can’t.”

Derek didn’t have any wisdom to add to that situation, other than, “You can’t stay here. We’ll both end up in the basement.”

He probably had a point. But it didn’t make Stiles feel any better.

“You could go back to Scott’s, probably,” said Derek.

“Scott could go to hell, probably,” replied Stiles.

"At least Allison isn't Kate, Stiles. Scott maybe has a chance that something works out," said Derek. Stiles stared at him, in utter disbelief.

"Her family still killed my _dad_. My _only_ family. I don't think that's a fair trade so Scott can get laid!" he said sharply. Derek winced.

"I'm just... you would be safer with Scott than foster care, is all," Derek said, because he was just a font of wisdom today. Stiles stood up, angry and frustrated now on top of everything else.

"Whatever. Look, I need a favor and then I need you to drive me back," he said. He started to pace. Derek waited him out, because he was a jerk who didn't volunteer to do favors until he knew what they were. Damnit.

"And I have put a lot of thought into this and it'll work out okay and doing this favor for me will even help you," Stiles rambled on. He held his hands out in a shrug. "So really, you're stupid not to help me."

Derek set his jaw and stood up. The _no_ was already forming. "I said I'd help, but if you're-"

" _No_ , I mean it," Stiles said, quick and reactive. He moved to block Derek walking away. "Bite me."

Derek glared at him for it but Stiles didn't back down. "No."

"You need a pack. Come on!" insisted Stiles. He shoved at Derek, desperate for the guy to listen to him. He needed someone to hear him. “Come on. Bite me. I need to break Scott’s face. Help me.”

“I _know_ we've been over this already," Derek said, practically growling at him. "The answer hasn't changed. I'm not helping you run to suicide via Death-by-Hunter here, Stiles."

"If I wanted Death-by-Hunter I'd just pick a fight with my new foster parents, apparently," Stiles argued. Derek glared at him.

"Or show up at my place and pick a fight with a werewolf," he shot back.

"I didn’t expect a fight! Look, of anybody you know right now, I know most what I'm asking for, and you know it," said Stiles. "Okay, Derek? I'm not an idiot and I don't care what you wanna hit me with, you know it. You know I'm not. I can make it work because I already helped Scott through all of it. And I can keep up with _you_ now, so how could it be worse if I was just as strong as you? If I could defend myself instead of wait for an old man to kick my ass-"

"Yeah, look what happened to that old man," Derek replied. "Look what happened to Paige. The bite doesn't always take, Stiles. And the only way to find out is to watch it work, or watch them die. And I won't. Not now."

"Scott poisoned Gerard. You saw him. He switched his pills with rowan ash," said Stiles, trying to get around the one argument he knew anything about. He didn't know who Paige was, and based on the look on Derek's face, he knew better than to ask. Derek shook his head.

"I won't, Stiles. You want the bite, you can go ask Scott. Leave me out of it," said Derek.

"I want to be able to defend myself! I want to fight back!" Stiles shouted at him. "I don't want to have to walk my sorry ass miles to find the only friend I've still got in the world, and have to walk around a fake trail to get here."

Derek lost some of the fire. "That's not true. You have friends-"

"What, you think I could go to Lydia? For anything at all right now?" Stiles replied. "She's in the same spot I am, but she's not alone."

"Fine," said Derek. "I get it. But don't ask me for the bite again. Ever."

"Fine, but you're an asshole," Stiles shot back, crossing his arms and sulking shamelessly. Derek pointed an accusing finger at him.

" _You_ need to make up your mind."

"What? All my friends have always been assholes. Except Lydia. She just gets bitchy sometimes," Stiles defended awkwardly. Derek rolled his eyes. He moved to the kitchenette to get his wallet and keys off the counter and Stiles perked up, paranoid.

"What- where are you going?"

"You want a bite, I'll get you _food_ ," said Derek. "And then I'm taking you back to the foster place. And we're never discussing your stupid idea again."

Stiles accepted it, disappointed, yet somehow strangely feeling like he could breathe around the knot in his chest for the first time in a week.

*~*~*


	3. Chapter 3

There were things that happened in locker rooms that nobody acknowledged the dumbassery of. For instance, “ _How did twenty feet of aquatic-grade steel chain get in your locker, Stilinski?_ ” was never once asked by anyone. Coach wanted to, desperately, but he had kept his nose out of it and saved everyone the embarrassment of Stiles trying to bullshit an explanation of why it was there, or reenacting the dumbassery of moving it there from his car. And _no_ , they _didn’t_ want to know how it had gotten there.

One of those dumbass locker room moments, however, from a year earlier, would ultimately lead Stiles to genius. Danny had been joking around with some juniors and Finstock rushed through, in enough of a hurry that he slammed into Giardi, and apologized like a normal person instead of like Coach. And he said something about a fire. Coach was gone for the rest of the day after that and everyone was concerned. But the next day Coach was back and acting like nothing had happened. Which of course meant something had happened, and Danny did the thing that Danny did best and looked into it without anybody realizing it until one day he showed up and announced that there hadn’t been a fire. He had somebody living in his garage and they had accidentally trapped his cat in the garage when they left.

The thing was, though, the guy had been living in Coach’s garage for a _month_ and Finstock hadn’t known about it _until_ the guy told him he locked the cat in.

And Stiles knew where Coach lived because Stiles’ dad used to be the sheriff of Beacon Hills and Stiles was a pain in the ass bored kid who collected dirt on anybody. He knew where Coach Finstock lived by the end of first semester, freshman year, and passed it around for a TP incident that had never gotten back to him. It was like kismet, looking back.

So less than a month after his dad’s funeral, Stiles snuck his stuff to Derek’s. And then from there he moved into Coach Finstock’s garage. And it wasn’t even a garage anymore. It was a garage that had been turned into an apartment. Bathroom and shower and kitchenette and everything. Stiles lived out of his suitcase, but he got his ass to school on his own, and he did his homework, and he just made sure he didn’t leave the lights on after dark.

No four year olds climbing on him, no hunters keeping him awake at night stressing out. No werewolves beating down his door. He only told Derek and Lydia where he was, because it was Finstock’s place, and the Coach wasn’t exactly the most stable guy they knew.

It was great.

It lasted all of a _week_.

The social worker showed up a week later. At the garage. Not at school, where Stiles had been dutifully attending without chaperone, but at the _garage_. She was not impressed with his disappearing act. No one important to her had known where he was for a week and everyone was worried he had been back to his old club-drug-using ways.

“I take it you don’t like the Tysons home?” she asked as soon as he opened the door to see her not-smiling face.

“They creeped me out and the kid thought it was okay to climb on me,” Stiles replied, mulish. He shrugged. “The dog was okay though.”

The woman snapped her fingers at him. “Get your stuff, let’s go.”

Stiles thought about closing the door in her face. He had a door. He could do it. “Go where?” he asked instead.

“I’ve got another family lined up,” the social worker said.

“But I’ve got a place! I’m here!” Stiles waved at the perfectly clean and not at all messy garage apartment, without letting her step through the door. The woman crossed her arms and looked like she was about to start in on a lecture but there was a noise from the screen door attached to the main house across the alleyway. Stiles glanced at his watch and saw that it was after four pm, so the guy had probably just gotten home to see some stranger stinking up his alley. Coach didn’t look ordinarily intelligent, but he looked particularly confused just then, seeing Stiles standing in the open side door of the garage apartment.

“Stilinski?” he asked, and Stiles said a mental _thank you_ to whatever higher power had made the coach remember his actual name for once.

“Yeah, Coach?” he asked, casual and innocent and _completely nothing to see here, Coach_...

“What are you doing in my apartment?” Finstock asked.

“Uh. Living in it?” he replied. Finstock blinked at him. Stiles hammed up the shock.

“What? He didn’t tell you?” Stiles said, working on his future Oscar. He waved a hand, annoyed. “Greenburg said it was okay. He said I could stay here a week ago!”

Coach narrowed his eyes and scoffed like the old man he was. “Freakin’ Greenburg.”

And with that complaint, the coach shut his screen door again and went back inside his house. Stiles watched to be sure the door closed before he looked back to the social worker. She stared at him in open annoyance, her arms crossed and hip hitched. Stiles just waved toward the house and gave a smug grin. “Told you. I’m staying here.”

“No you’re not. Your coach is harboring a runaway and don’t make me call the sheriff’s office on this,” the social worker warned. Stiles’ grin faded. He slammed the door in her face and then went to pack up his stuff.

It turned out later that Lydia had told Allison where Stiles was staying, because Stiles refused to tell her and Scott. And then Allison told Scott. And then Scott told his mom. And then his mom told the social worker, because she was an adult, and she was in league with other adults to ruin his life. Just because the adults didn’t know where Stiles was didn’t mean he was off being a drug addict, but thanks to them, Stiles got two surprise drug tests the following week.

Stiles stopped talking to any of them at school. He started skipping school altogether. The new foster family was the same as the last one, and Derek definitely knew their last name. And their first names. And their faces. Beacon Hills was a great place for interbred rednecks and hunters, apparently. The Grahams personally dropped him off at school every morning, the same as the Tysons had, and Stiles waved them off before disappearing out into the fields and then hiking through the preserve all day rather than deal with Scott and Allison. Derek caught on that he was skipping school and brought him lunch a few times.

“Can I just stash my stuff at your place?” Stiles asked on one of the lunch trips. “I don’t trust it there.”

Derek thought about it before he reluctantly nodded. They had been sitting on a fallen tree and he stood up.

“Fine. Let’s go,” he said. Stiles stared at him over a french fry.

“What? Right now?” he asked. Derek nodded like Stiles was being stupid.

“Yes, right now. They’re at work, right? You have a key?” he asked. At Stiles’ nod, he just waved toward where he had parked his car. “Then let’s go. Right now. And get the stuff you want stashed at my place so you don’t have to sneak it out on your own.”

Stiles scrambled to follow after him. The Camero wasn’t Roscoe, but it was a helluva lot better than walking.

*~*~*

Stiles lasted three weeks the new family before he got tired of hearing a radio or a phone call after dark send one or the other of the Grahams running for the Argents’ place. They had to be hunters. Neither of them were paramedics or fire department, and he knew they weren’t cops. Hunters. And their house was locked up just as snug as the Tysons’ place had been after dark. So when one of them left to go hunt teenagers, Stiles was quietly locked in his room, which was on the second story, and he couldn’t sneak out.

The best Stiles could do was text Derek, on Derek’s phone, and tell him the Hunters were on the way. He didn’t mind spying from the sidelines when it worked. But he wasn’t keen on being locked in where the Argents could get their hands on him, either.

Stiles had kept his stuff in his lacrosse bag since ditching most of his things with Derek, so the Grahams didn’t think anything of it when he left his bedroom clean before school and walked out of the room with his gym bag and backpack both. He stuffed the gym bag in his locker and left it there. Then he walked off campus with his backpack and walked off into the preserve to kill time until sundown. He didn’t know where he would stay, since Derek’s wasn’t an option, and the social worker would look for him at Finstock’s the second the Grahams called her to say he hadn’t shown up after school.

Shit. Did the school tell the social worker when Stiles skipped class? Oh well. He would go back when he found some place to stay that wasn’t a hunter’s nest.

He got a text on his phone, from Lydia.

_where r u???

And he didn’t reply to it. The last time he told her where he was staying, he got in trouble. She tried twice more before she gave up. Stiles ended up back at the old Hale house, just because it was a place he knew. It was creepy as hell, but it was mostly four walls and a roof, as long as he ignored the places where the floor had fallen in. He couldn’t stay there permanently, but it would do for the day.

An hour later, he got another text.

_i am not ur msg service. Text lydia back.

Derek seemed annoyed, but as far as Stiles was concerned, that seemed very much like a Lydia-Problem. It wasn’t _Stiles’_ fault Derek gave Lydia his number. He didn’t text Derek back, either. The next one waited a few minutes.

_where are you? Not at school

Stiles sighed and had to tell him. They were just going to blow it up if he didn’t. A half an hour later, Derek just showed up in person.

“Seriously, you have to stop this,” he said. He pointed at the house that Stiles sat on the steps of. “That is what happens when the Argents get pissed off at people they can’t get away with cutting in half.”

“Yeah? And when they get pissed at people they _can_ cut in half, they gotta use bait to get at ‘em, and when that _bait_ lives in their house, they get _locked up_ , and I don’t like it,” replied Stiles. “So give me a door number four, Derek, and I’ll head for it, but I’m not going back to the Grahams’ place.”

“They aren’t using you as bait, Stiles,” Derek argued. “Allison knows where Scott is. He’s still trying to work with Gerard.”

“He’s obviously still a moron,” said Stiles. Derek nodded his agreement.

“But he’s _your_ moron. And he’s worried about you. And when you just disappear on everybody, it... makes waves.”

Stiles jumped up off the steps then, realizing two steps later he was about to punch somebody who could kill him without breaking a sweat and he stopped short. “He’s not my moron. He’s the moron who let his dick get my dad killed!”

Derek allowed that, crossed his arms to wall off against the angry wall of energy that was a wired and unhappy Stiles Stilinski. There was nothing to be offered to counter that and Derek waited him out until Stiles stood down and paced back toward the house.

“He also figured out how to put Gerard on ice for the rest of us,” Derek said. “Which is the only reason _I’m_ still able to talk to you without painting a target on your forehead. If he weren’t coughing up black, I’d be dead, too. Then what, Stiles? We’ve got to work with what we’ve got, here. And for now, that’s Scott.”

Stiles scowled at him for the point. “Did you find Erica yet?”

“No. And Boyd’s disappeared again because he went looking for her without us,” replied Derek. “This is why. You get that, right? We can’t be looking for everyone at the same time. We need to know where you are is safe.”

“And _you’re_ gonna tell me staying with _hunters_ is safe?” Stiles returned.

“No.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Just go to school. You’ve got a month left-”

“Two months.” Stiles crossed his arms and glared at his backpack.

“Fine. Just go to school for two months,” Derek amended. Stiles aimed the glare at him. “What? I didn’t say stay with the Grahams, I just said go to school.”

“I have no place to stay,” said Stiles.

“Yes you do,” replied Derek. Stiles unfolded slightly.

“What happened to-”

“I didn’t say you could stay with me, I said you’ve got a place,” said Derek. He pointed again at the house behind Stiles. “Your dad’s place. It’s not going to get sold until they’re done with his estate. It’s just going to sit empty for years.”

“It’s boarded up,” said Stiles. He still hadn’t been back to his house since his dad had died and the suggestion was... revolutionary and terrifying. Derek nodded and shrugged.

“That’s what makes it perfect. You’ll be without electricity, but whatever,” said Derek. Stiles stared at him.

“But how do I get in?”

“Have you even seen the place lately?” Derek asked. Stiles shook his head. Derek sighed and pointed at Stiles’ backpack. “Get your shit. Let’s go.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you how to break into your own damn house,” said Derek, his usual level of annoyed as he walked away. “You’re worse than a puppy.”

“ _Fuck off_ or I’ll piss on your couch,” Stiles returned, dodging to grab his backpack off the stairs before chasing after Derek. “Can we pick up my shit from school first?”

*~*~*

It took the social worker longer to track him down that time. After two weeks, she finally showed up and collected him from school. From the middle of class. It happened to be a class Scott was in and Stiles rolled his eyes at his former friend’s automatic claims of innocence. Stiles didn’t care if Scott had told anybody he was still showing up to classes because the school attendance office did that. Stiles figured that there was no way the woman would ever figure out he had been breaking into his dad’s house, because Derek was the only one who knew. And Derek knew Scott was a rat who would tell the Argents, so Derek wasn’t going to throw Stiles under the SUV wheels like that. He was a dumb, cranky asshole most of the time, but Derek hadn’t knifed him in the back yet.

“Why do you keep running away when I find you a place to live?” SocialWorker Pantsuit asked as she marched him away from his last class of the day. Hey, she had gotten him out of history twenty minutes early, so Stiles wasn’t going to complain.

“Why do you keep finding me places to live where they lock me in the house at night?” Stiles replied, as innocent as possible. He dutifully detoured her to his locker so he could claim his gym bag. His cover story to keep his dad’s house off the books: he was living at the school and fuck their security system in the gym. She crossed her arms and glared at him as he dialed his locker combination.

“Because you keep running away and disappearing,” she replied. “What else are they supposed to do? Lock you in a cell?”

“Did they fix the one that killed my dad yet?” Stiles shot back. The social worker lowered her chin and frowned at the ground. She cleared her throat and moved on.

“You have to have a place to live where there are adults who can make sure you have food and basic necessities and safety, Stiles.”

“I get food at the school,” said Stiles. Breakfast and lunch, when he woke up early enough to get the free breakfast anyway. Mostly he stuck to PopTarts and cheap stuff he could get from the vending machines. Pantsuit didn’t like his logic though and she was just barely not dragging him by the ear to the new foster family.

The new guys weren’t hunters, Stiles was pretty sure. But he didn’t like them. They had three other foster kids and the kids were all in elementary school. They didn’t really smile much and Stiles got a really weird vibe. He looked at Pantsuit and even saw her making a face at the well-behaved trio of ten-year-olds who lined up in the living room to meet Stiles when their faster-father called them out of their rooms. Two girls and a boy, and Stiles was getting to bunk with a ten-year-old. _Great_. At least he wasn’t four and obsessed with climbing equipment. But he did wet the bed still. And Stiles had the lower bunk. It got pungent.

Things were alright at first, but there was little stuff that bugged Stiles. It had been a long time since he'd had a mom, but he didn't think it was normal that Mrs. Rose spent so much of her day yelling from one end of the house to the other. If there was something to be said to her husband, or to any of the kids, and they weren’t in the room, it was yelled. Stiles was naturally loud, but Mrs. Rose _yelled_. And not generally in a very fun tone. She would screech while someone was in the room with her, if it wasn’t the person she was looking for.

Stiles eventually heard the Roses arguing in their room at night, most of them ending up with Mrs. Rose crying. The wracking sobs kind of crying. It got to where Stiles could hear him calling her names that nobody should ever have to listen to, whether they were aimed at them or not. Some nights, the man just camped out on the couch rather than go rounds with his wife first, and Stiles was wary of it. He didn’t feel safe in the house, and there were three ten year olds in the middle of it. The hunter families had been their own kind of fucked up, but nothing like this.

It was easy enough to start looking out for the kids after that. Stiles would pick them up from school and walk them home, even kept busy trying to make sure they got their homework done so there was less yelling overall from the adults. The irony of his ADHD ass trying to make a couple of ten year olds do their homework was not lost on him, but Stiles couldn’t just pack up and move home so easily this time. When he had to report in for the drug test, he tried telling Pantsuit about the fights, but she wasn’t bothered by it. The kids had a roof over their head, and they were fed and went to school, and they were safe. When the kids’ therapist raised a flag, she would listen to Stiles’ insistence that there was a problem, but in the meanwhile, the kids all had a home.

Stiles snuck out of class at lunch that day to go home. To his home. Derek must have turned the electricity on somehow without telling him. Stiles just found out by accident when he tried to flick the light switch on the bathroom wall out of old habit and the lights just came on. He texted Derek with a “WTF” and the reply was that Derek hadn't done anything. Whatever. He got the coffee pot to work, too.

Stiles skipped class the rest of the afternoon and curled up in his own bed, with his own pillow, and slept off the stress that was dragging him down. He texted Derek to tell him where he was though, because he knew Lydia would be blowing up his phone, and he was still not okay telling any of the others where he went. He wanted to keep his house as long as he could, and nobody else seemed to care about that.

He picked up the kids after their school got out and they were back at the house forty minutes early, which made Mrs. Rose annoyed because that was forty-kid-free minutes she had been deprived of. Stiles just shrugged it off, told her he had a short day schedule, and started in on homework with the younger kids at the kitchen table. She got her forty minutes anyway, and then some, because Stiles kept the kids out of her hair.

Thanks to the nap in the middle of the day, Stiles was still awake at two am. But he had to pretend to be asleep because he shared a room with a ten-year-old who had a ten pm bedtime. He heard the usual fighting through the walls. Got really pissed off about it, too, because the kids probably got woken up by it. There was a definite correlation between the Roses’ fights and Lenny’s nightmares. Stiles remembered his dad getting drunk a few times, saying stupid shit, yelling some of it. But he always eventually apologized, even if it was just showing up at the end of a shift with a new game, and a post-it note that had _‘sorry’_ scrawled on it. And that had never happened before his mom had died.

But that night, after the fight, Stiles very clearly heard the door to the girls’ bedroom open, just across the hall from his and Lenny’s. Stiles was a natural at all things paranoia and when the door didn’t fumble closed like Sissy or Dezi had left to use the bathroom, all the mental alarm bells started going off. Stiles shoved himself out of bed and went to his door. The boys’ bedroom door was rarely ever closed all the way anyway, so it just whiffed open easily. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Mr. Rose standing in the other doorway. Just standing there, looking in. Like a creeper.

“Something wrong?” Stiles asked. The guy was as old as Peter Hale and he was creeping on ten-year-old girls, _hell yeah_ there was something wrong, but Stiles kept that opinion to himself. And he stood there, watching the guy, not moving until Mr. Rose kept walking down the hall. Stiles pulled the girls’ bedroom door shut and then went and locked himself in the bathroom because he could have the light on in there and he was too pissed off to sit in the dark. The lights flickered a few times and he saw on the counter-top, next to the door, listening to the hallway and angrily texting Derek to ask what to do.

_tell the social worker

That wasn’t helpful since Stiles had tried before and hadn’t been listened to. Just that day, even. There was no way she would listen to him now. He would have to watch out for the kids.

_I’m ditching afternoons from now on

There was a few minutes quiet, just the spacey sound of buzzing anger between his ears, until the phone buzzed back.

_ Just check in.  
_ Call if there’s a fight  
_ because you’re stupid.

Derek was a jerk but he wasn’t stupid. Stiles left the bathroom, and then left the bedroom door open so he could hear when someone was in the hall. He didn’t really sleep much, and showed up at breakfast tired, but he would sleep later. He spent the next few days not getting along so great with Mr. Rose, sleeping funny hours, skipping random classes to catnap instead. The bedroom door didn’t get closed ever anymore.

The third week hit a boiling point when it happened again and Stiles just sat down in the doorway after that, willfully staring at the adult being a creeper in the hallway.

“Go to bed,” the man had the gall to tell him.

“You first,” said Stiles. “You’re supposed to be the role model and all.”

Mr. Rose kicked his leg on the way by the door at that point, muttering a sarcastic apology. Mrs. Rose started getting in on the glaring and the attitude after that, but she probably didn’t know what the guy’s problem was. Stiles wasn’t a small kid, he was almost as tall as Mr. Rose, and he was used to the abusive tactics of lacrosse jocks and werewolves and hunters who threw people against walls just to say _hello_. He met every bumped shoulder and glare with a match of his own. And he had no problem laying down sarcasm and burning the man’s pride with random barbs if he tried talking to Stiles.

The household in general was unbearable, but the adults left the smaller kids alone and the kids disappeared to their own corners after their homework and dinner was done. There was a treehouse in the backyard even, and the girls had taken it over. They were outside when Mr. Rose and his beer started taking pot-shots at Stiles, talking shit like how he had voted for Sheriff Stilinski and how he wouldn’t have if he’d known his kid was a pain in the ass punk. He was spoiling for a fight, and his wife was yelling at the both of them for it. Stiles hid in his room to stay out of it, but they just yelled, the adults at each other from different rooms, and Mr. Rose at Stiles from the den.

Stiles finally grabbed his backpack and walked out the front door, when it wasn’t quite sundown. Mr. Rose followed him out.

"Where are you going?" he demanded.

"Somewhere _not here_ ," replied Stiles. He hardly glanced back at the man. Mr. Rose jumped off the porch and grabbed him by the backpack.

"It's late. Get back in the house," said Mr. Rose. He caught at Stiles' arm and Stiles jerked away, getting stuck because the man still had his backpack in hand.

"Hell no. I'm not going to sit there and get sworn at by a drunk who likes little girls," Stiles shot back.

For some reason, Stiles hadn't been expecting the punch to the jaw. It hurt a lot and he staggered, almost fell, except Mr. Rose had him by the backpack. The man jerked him back and got in his face. He pointed at the porch. "Get. Back. In the house."

Stiles looked over his shoulder as Mrs. Rose stepped out the door, a phone in her hand. Stiles tried again to get free but it didn't work. He scowled and pulled out of his backpack, just to get away from it. Then he caught it by the same strap Mr. Rose held and tugged on it, trying to pull the bag back even as he started walking across the lawn back to the house.

"He just left the house. Jeff got him back," Mrs. Rose was saying into the phone. She stopped Stiles at the door, her eyes wide as she looked at his face. "What the hell happened? Your lip is _bleeding-_ "

"The idiot tripped off the porch," Mr. Rose lied easily and Stiles glared at him. Mrs. Rose let go of his shoulder and let him go in the house, following her husband in behind Stiles and closing the door. She relayed the story to whoever she was talking to on the phone, and Stiles thought he heard his social worker’s voice on the other end swearing at him.

Great. Now he was screwed.

Mr. Rose escorted him into the den, took his backpack from him, and told him to sit down on the couch. His wife stood with the phone to her ear, blocking the path to the front door. And Stiles found himself with a pissed off foster problem.

An hour later, he was at the hospital, getting tested for drugs again, with the social worker and Mr. Rose both lurking. It was well into the late shift, so Melissa McCall arranged to take the blood tests, thankfully in a seperate room from his babysitters, and she kept frowning at him.

"Are you okay, Stiles?" she asked, quiet.

"The guy just decked me in the jaw, he creeps on little girls, and my social worker won't believe me," Stiles replied, the anger of the last few hours right there in his voice. "I have to do a freaking _drug test_ because everybody thinks _I'm_ the liar. I'm doing _great_ , Mrs. M. Thanks."

"Hey," she said, catching his hand and crouching in front of where he sat in the phlebotomists' chair. "What are you talking about?"

"Nevermind," said Stiles. He was tired of trusting people. "Can I go now or what?"

"No, because I want you to talk to me, kid. What do you mean he hit you? Mr. Rose hit you?" Melissa asked.

"I told you that," he said.

"Why doesn't Ms. Walker believe you?"

"Who?"

"Your social worker..."

Oh. Right. Stiles shook his head. "She thinks I’m a secret drug addict. Has since I made it out of the... since. Whatever. Look, it's not important. I'll just... go back. Stay there. And if I'm there, he'll leave the kids alone, or I'll kick his ass."

Melissa rubbed at his hand. "You aren't Scott or Isaac, sweetie. There's a bruise on your face that says you won't kick his ass. Let me talk to Ms. Walker. Alright?"

"No. Just get the stupid tests done so I can prove I'm not tripping and maybe next time she'll believe me. He just got to her first this time. Told her I tripped off the porch," Stiles said.

Melissa stared at him like she had more questions but Stiles was done. She let him go back to the social worker and she got the samples where they needed to go. And Stiles had to sit in the stupid hospital lobby chairs for hours with the two adults as they waited for the verdict, because his social worker wasn't letting Stiles leave the hospital until she was absolutely certain she didn't need to take him back to Eichen. Given the stakes, Stiles shut up and waited.

He glared at the both of them when the report came back clear. And then he went back to the Roses' and the game continued on. They kept him home for two days, all but locking him in his room until the weekend, because they didn't want him going to school with a bruise. It was too close to the end of the semester, and it made Stiles miss an exam, but he didn't care.

Their midnight arguments stopped for a few days. Mr. Rose stayed out of the girls' bedroom. The adults were both just extra snappy and annoyed with Stiles' existence. It didn't get any better when school was out two weeks later and he wasn't allowed to leave, _ever_.

Derek and Lydia texted him to wish him a happy birthday since he was grounded. Apparently Scott told them.

Over the next month, Stiles ended up seeing Melissa almost every week. Always the same reason. Always the same result. And she got just as annoyed as he did by it. She finally took Ms. Walker aside and read her the riot act about it, while Stiles sat in the lobby with Mr. Rose.

He didn't care by then. School had been out for two weeks and Stiles was fine with sleeping in when the Roses went to work. The kids liked him and they listened to him for the most part. Besides, Stiles could sleep through anything. Mr. Rose could suffer and Stiles would sleep better.

A few days after Melissa talked to Pantsuit, Stiles and the two girls were all quietly removed from the Roses' home. A couple of older boys were swapped in, and Sissy and Dezi were, supposedly, sent to their grandmother in Nevada. Stiles had won that round. But he still got moved to a new foster home.

He was there a week, then ran away while they were at work. He went back to his dad's house, found it exactly as he had left it.

A day later, Social Worker Pantsuit showed up, with a sheriff’s deputy, and raided his home to drag him out of it. She made him pack up his stuff into suitcases again because he wouldn't be going back to live by himself in an empty house. It wasn’t an empty house, though. It was his home. But that didn't count.

*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ____________________________________________
> 
> This one also has no beta, because life is being life. (:  
> Thus, posting will be wonky.


	4. Chapter 4

Three months after his dad died, the social worker packed Stiles up and moved him from the place he found for himself. Again.

All suspicions were confirmed when the car pulled up to a familiar house in a familiar neighborhood.

“Here we go,” said his social worker. Stiles was still very intentionally trying not to remember her name because she was clearly not a real human. Just a hunter pawn in a social worker’s pantsuit.

“Nope,” Stiles said. “I can’t stay here.”

“Why not.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not.”

“Because of reasons.”

The social worker sighed and thumped her head back against the headrest. “The same reasons you can’t stay at the McCall place?”

Stiles looked at her sharply. “Exact same fucking reasons,” he said. The woman snapped her fingers at him.

“Watch your language, Stiles,” she said. Stiles, for once in his recently miserable life, welcomed the order to stop talking. He slunk lower in the seat and wished for the hundredth time he still had his car. His dad died without a will, so it would be years before Stiles could access anything from the estate, and by then the Jeep would be long gone. Foster kids probably weren’t allowed to drive anyway, he reasoned miserably.

So Stiles sat outside the home of Chris and Victoria Argent, heirs-apparent to the Beacon Hills, California, Hunters Hobby Club.

Nope.

“Come on. Get out of the car,” said Social Worker Pantsuit. “The Argents asked to help. They said their daughter was a friend of yours.”

“No, Allison is a friend of Scott’s,” Stiles clarified, because that was a very important factor also.

“Well, maybe now she can be yours, too,” the woman said. She got out of the car and pulled the suitcases and Stiles’ pillow out of the trunk. Stiles sat up, panicked, as his pillow was hostaged behind enemy lines. Chris Argent stood in the driveway to accept Stiles’ stuff. He waited for Stiles to get out of the car.

Instead, Stiles slowly snuck his hand out to lock himself in the car. Pantsuit had left her keys in the ignition, so Stiles was proud of himself for the accomplishment.

After a minute or so, Chris Argent walked over and crouched in front of the door. He met Stiles eye to eye through the window.

Finally, he said, “If you want answers, you’ll have to go inside.”

Stiles’ smug attachment to his weak rebellion slowly faded as Argent lobbed the bait smack into his forehead.

What answers? To which questions?

It had been months since Stiles had been around Scott and the others. The only answer he needed had been provided for him by life: the people he thought were his friends really weren’t at all. Case closed. There were a lot fewer questions in general since then.

So what answers did Argent still have for him then?

Shit.

Nervous, paranoid curiosity got the best of him, and Stiles reached for the door handle to let himself out. He could stay until he had answers, and then he could just leave again. Problem solved, win/win.

Argent held the door open for him. Stiles felt like a dead man walking as he moved up to the front door. He remembered quite clearly being dragged through the garage and down the basement steps months earlier. This time, he walked himself through the front door. He helpfully handed Pantsuit the keys she had left in the car, but she didn’t seem impressed.

“You try this. And I’ll check in with you in a few days, to be sure you’re settled in. Alright?” she asked. Stiles nodded vaguely, looking around the house instead.

“Whatever.”

And then Pantsuit left him there. Stiles held on to his backpack strap for dear life, waited for the hunters to pounce. He watched Argent close for the warning signs.

“She said she’s going to check up on me,” he warned. “Means you can’t leave bruises this time.”

Chris Argent stood four feet away and frowned at him. “We’re trying to help, Stiles,” he said.

“I don’t need your help,” said Stiles.

“Why? You think Derek Hale will help you?” Chris Argent shook his head. “We still don’t know who killed my sister, and Hale nearly killed my wife three months ago. You need to pick your friends better, kid. They’re all gonna get you killed, too.”

“Yeah, and she’s fine now,” said Stiles, bitterly. “And Scott’s not the one who blew up my dad.”

That struck a nerve and Argent actually stepped closer. Stiles almost worried he was going to push the man into a fight, which became a problem considering Argent was a gun dealer and Stiles didn’t even carry a knife. His life would have been so much better if Derek had just bit him when he’d asked, damnit.

“It wasn’t me either. Otherwise, I promise you, you wouldn’t be standing here,” said Chris. Stiles didn’t have any trouble believing him on that admission at least. He stayed quiet rather than push further, not sure what to say or do to avoid becoming mince meat or werewolf bait, either one. The silence dragged on. Argent finally caught his arm and pushed him toward the stairs. “Your room is up there.”

“You promised me answers,” Stiles replied, tugging his arm free without trouble.

“Yes, and a roof over your head, and food. And supplies to switch your classes to online-only so you don’t drop out,” said Chris. “One thing at a time.”

“Is this some kind of apology or something?” Stiles asked, as bitter as he was confused now. “You think I’m gonna tell people what really happened or something? Is this a bribe?”

“No. This is just being human,” Chris told him. He stopped in front of a door and waved Stiles inside. It wasn’t a jail cell at least. That was promising. Stiles’ stuff was already waiting by the closet doors. At least, the stuff he didn’t have stashed at Derek’s place. The stuff he wouldn’t mind losing if he had to run for good. Stiles stared blankly around the room.

“You are welcome to stay with us, Stiles. This was Allison’s idea. She said you and Scott hadn’t talked in months and this... this isn’t a good time to be on your own. My family didn’t want to see anything happen to your dad, or you. This is the best we can do to keep you safe now,” Argent said. He probably meant it, too. Stiles didn’t exactly speak the same language as Allison Argent, but he had at least figured out she was a good person.

Stiles closed his fingers around the phone in his pocket. He was behind enemy lines. But maybe he was safer here for a while. And maybe it would help him find where Erica and Boyd had been for the last few months since Argent had supposedly let them all out of the basement. Stiles was the last one to have seen them, and he hadn’t been in a good place then to realize it.

Maybe something could be salvaged out of it.

“Okay,” he said, resigned. He could plan his way out of it if he had to. But he was tired.

“Good. All we ask is that you come down for meals. Nobody’s going to be your maid service, either. But there’s food. You can eat. We can stay out of each other’s way,” said Chris. Stiles nodded agreement; it sounded good to him.

“Just... do me a favor? One thing,” said Stiles. Chris stopped in the doorway as he was closing it, waited for the request with obvious patience.

“Next time somebody decides they have to shoot me, make sure it’s not loaded with werewolf drugs. Social services thinks I’m some kinda drug addict, and I’m living in hell.”

Argent didn’t have anything to say to that. He just closed the door.

*~*~*

Derek saw the words written in simpleton's text-message English on the screen, but he didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it, but more generally he couldn't get his head wrapped around it. The Argents?

Derek couldn't make sense of it.

_ call me.

And he waited for Stiles to get somewhere he could safely use the phone, assuming the Argents hadn't taken it from him. Shit, he was going to have to change his contact name on that phone next time he saw Stiles. Or just tell Stiles to, but if anything seemed like a bad idea, it was letting Stiles pick a fake contact name for him.

The cellphone buzzed and it was a call so Derek snatched it back up. "You’re not serious."

"No, but I just changed your contact name to Padfoot," replied Stiles.

"You’re not subtle either," said Derek. "Try again."

"Fine, I'll change it," said Stiles, on a sigh. "And by the way, serious as a heart attack. I figured out how to get on the roof. Scott said it was possible. Guess he wasn't lying."

"Rooftops are easier when you heal, so don't fall, idiot," replied Derek.

"I didn't have to climb a tree or something, jerk," said Stiles. "I just opened my window and walked up to the top. I got my own room this time."

Derek frowned at his couch. "Don't go back to your Dad's place."

"Can't anyway. That's where she found me this time. They're really gonna board it up this time," said Stiles. "So I guess you can cut the power again."

"I didn't turn the power on, Stiles. Thought about it, but it seemed like a big red flag," replied Derek.

“Well, somebody did. I got the coffee pot working,” Stiles said after a long quiet. “Look, I don’t know if they’re going to let me go wandering but-”

“Yeah, I’ll stop by there tonight and make sure somebody’s not camping out in it,” Derek interrupted. Stiles panicked a little after that, remembering out loud about all of his stuff in the house still. He couldn’t exactly carry it around with him between foster family homes, but it was still his stuff. Nobody had messed with the house in the few months since the funeral, so everything was covered in dust, but it was still there. Somebody had even left remembrance-flowers on the front porch that had long since dried out, but they were still there.

And there were parts of the house Derek figured Stiles wouldn’t have gone near even when he was staying there. He figured Stiles would have stayed out of his dad’s room, probably avoided the dining room. The TV would have been dark, so maybe he even stayed out of the den. Derek only stayed in his room at the old burned out house because he still saw the rest of the house in living color in his head, and it wasn’t that way anymore. But in Stiles' house, those places he didn't go were places other people might, in a boarded up house.

Cora walked through the front door then, Isaac trailing behind her, and Derek had to get off the phone. He only gave Stiles a few seconds warning before bailing to deal with their report. His sister didn’t have much good news to offer up, Still no leads on Erica. Boyd was back again but that was a tenuous thing, because his priority was tracking Erica, so he was gone more than back. And he was worse than Stiles at keeping in contact before doing stupid things.

Cora had tracked Boyd to Utah a week earlier and their only warning was twelve hours of radio silence before he took off. The guy had family everywhere and if he could scrounge a place to stay, he went on his own. He had a truck, he didn’t need Derek’s permission. He wasn’t bothering with the idea of an alpha, not after spending time in lockup with Cora and Erica because of the Alpha pack. Derek had figured that out and helped anyway, and Cora called him a failure for it. That was helpful.

“Boyd said the pack is moving again. He said he thinks Washington this time,” said Cora. She was looking at Derek a little sideways, like she expected trouble from his corner. He blinked at her.

“What.”

“Who were you talking to?” his sister asked.

Derek shrugged. “I’ve got a contact on the hunters. Was just confirming something with him.”

“Confirming what?” asked Isaac. Derek looked over at him.

“The Argents got Stiles again. This time legally. They’re fostering him,” said Derek. He shook his head. “Keep it to yourselves though. Allison will tell Scott when they want us to know about it.”

“What’d they do that for?” Isaac blurted. “That can’t be good.”

Derek nodded his agreement with the observation. “Yeah, I dunno.”

Cora decided she wanted to go along with Derek later that night when he went to check on the Stilinski house. She was so very different than she had been when she was nine years old. She didn't trust Derek now, saw him as a failure with good enough reason, but she still tugged at being family and acted like she wanted her big brother around. She was off and on like a light switch, though, because she just as often wanted her big brother to walk off a cliff. It was probably a Hale thing, so Derek suffered through the barbs.

So Cora slammed the car door and followed up the street after Derek.

"Why don't we just park in the driveway like normal people?" she asked.

"Because nobody lives in the house, and we're just making sure it's still empty," said Derek, keeping his voice extra quiet in the hopes the girl would catch the hint. Cora glared at him, huffed out an annoyed sigh, and caught up to him to fall into step with him. His interpretation was that she didn't approve of his caution, but she could get over it. They jumped the fence into some neighbor's backyard, crossed into another one, and then finally into the Stilinski's side yard behind the safety of the locked fence.

And the first thing Derek noticed was the kitchen light all lit up inside.

"Somebody's in there," said Cora. Derek nodded.

"They shouldn't be," he said. Cora brushed by him boldly and pounced up the back stairs like a cat to open the back door. Which Stiles had left unlocked. Because he was an idiot. He of all people should know that a fence gate lock was not enough to keep people out.

For some reason, it wasn’t as surprising as it should have been to see Chris Argent coming downstairs as Derek got into the house behind Cora. The hunter had his gun drawn but he recognized the pair of them and kept it at his side.

"Stiles isn't here," Argent said, tone hard. "Get out."

"You aren't supposed to be here either," said Cora. "You first."

Derek grinned dryly and looked innocently up at Argent. "She's right."

Argent didn’t look impressed. He shook his head. "I'm locking up. The _owners_ won't be back for a while."

"You turned the power back on for him, didn't you?" Derek asked.

"The idiot was sneaking into teachers' garages and sleeping at the school. This place at least made more sense," replied Chris.

"And _you_ could control it," said Derek.

Chris rolled his eyes. "Gerard wants _your_ head on a platter, not Stiles', so as long as you leave him out of things, he's fine."

"He is out. And your family is _still_ hounding him," said Derek. "So you'll excuse me for siding with his paranoia on this one."

"You can shove your paranoia," returned Argent. "My interest is in keeping the kid alive. Gerard almost wiped out the humanity in _my daughter_ because of _you_. I've got no goddamn proof Allison didn't order the c4 on the jail cells that cost her friend his dad and killed the Sheriff. Just her word. So if helping Stiles keeps Gerard out of her head, I'll roll with it. It's not complicated, Derek. Just leave the kids alone."

"Because of you, he doesn't trust his friends," replied Derek. "Especially Allison and Scott."

"We're working on that," said Chris.

"Then leave him alone if he wants to talk to the rest of us," Derek said, stepping forward. "Let him get back to some kind of normal. Hell, let him come here."

"This place isn't my call," said Chris, glancing around at the abandoned kitchen. He looked back at Derek. "But the other is. So _no_."

"So you'll just lock him up again." Derek rolled his eyes. It had been a long shot, so he wasn't surprised when it failed.

Chris pointed toward the door then. "Now you two can leave. And I'm going to finish locking up the house."

Cora caught Derek’s arm and dragged him back. They left the house without getting shot at, and the door was deadbolted behind them before they reached the fence.

"You’re stupid, you know that?" Cora hissed at him. "What the hell was that for?"

"Stiles is right. They're just going to lock him up. Keeps Scott away from their place, but on a tighter leash," said Derek.

Cora had never even met Stiles and knew very little about why it would matter. "They lock up humans now, too?"

Derek scoffed. "Yeah. Apparently they do."

*~*~*

"Stiles?" The voice accompanied a knock on the door. Absolutely no part of Stiles wanted to talk to Scott’s girlfriend, however, and he ignored it.

The problem was, it was her house.

Allison let herself in the room, careful and all but peeking through her fingers to avoid acknowledging the invasion of privacy. Stiles remembered the basement suddenly and laughed at himself for the expectation of privacy at all. How dumb could he get?

"What?" he asked, a sufficient greeting under the circumstances, he figured. Allison let herself in, and closed the door behind herself. She walked into the room, wringing her hands. Stiles sat on the foot of the bed. He had slept in his clothes, on top of the covers. Too afraid of the house to be able to sleep, but too much not-a-werewolf to have grabbed his stuff and bailed out the window.

"It's ten AM. Were you going to come down to breakfast?" Allison asked.

"Not hungry," said Stiles.

"Yes you are," replied Allison, frowning. "You skipped dinner. You should be starving."

Stiles shrugged. He looked from the floor up to her face. "The last time I was in this house, your grandfather beat me up so he could send a message to Scott and Derek. I was stuck in your basement for twenty-four hours with Erica and Boyd, and then when they got out, I got to get electrocuted over and over... And did I mention the mythical drug problem that my social worker keeps trying to throw me in Eichen for came from here? I'm _not_ hungry."

Allison seemed surprised, but who knew how involved she was with the hunters. She had seemed pretty intent on taking Derek’s head off back at the sheriff’s station, but that had calmed down since the Argents had put Derek Hale on their _Wanted Alive_ list, and Derek was okay with her existence. If Derek didn’t hate her, Stiles figured he couldn’t. Scott was another story, but whatever. Allison still snuck around with Scott. Still played both sides, somehow. The best way for her to be okay with her family’s more dangerous activities would be to stay in the dark about them.

"He was angry still, then. Derek tried to kill my mom-"

"Hunters killed my dad," Stiles replied. "Am I supposed to be cool with that? _Oh, he was_ mad _, at least he had a good reason_?"

“It wasn’t us, Stiles, I promise you. I didn’t order the explosion. Even we don’t know who did it.” Allison sat down on the edge of the bed with him, shoulders slumped. "Look, it's been months now and I'm still trying to figure all of this out, okay? It's not just obvious good guys and bad guys. Not really."

"I don't care about good guys and bad guys, Allison. I care about not getting locked up in the basement again!" Stiles told her. "I mean, call me selfish, I don't care, but that wasn't fun. It hurt. A lot."

"That's why you're here, Stiles, I promise. This is the safest place for you," said Allison. "Gra- Gerard is too sick now to hurt anyone-”

“Bullshit. He was coughing up ash and _still_ put me in the hospital,” Stiles interrupted. Allison shook her head and tried to backpedal.

“My mom’s in charge again. She can see you're safe if you're here. She knows you're staying away from Derek and Scott. That's all that matters. Everyone will leave you alone, both sides."

"What the hell, Allison-" Stiles squinted at her, confused. He wisely lowered his voice to whisper at her. "You’re still seeing Scott."

"No, I'm not. I've told my parents we broke up. He's seeing Kira," she said calmly. Stiles narrowed his eyes, wishing he could read minds. Allison cracked. "I'm... seeing Isaac. But it's okay because Isaac isn't an alpha."

" _Ohmygod_!" Stiles clapped his hands over his face. It was too early in the morning for this bullshit. He hadn't even had coffee. "Here's a concept- how about nobody gives a damn who's dating who, and everybody just, I dunno, stops _killing_ each other?"

"Except people are still dying, Stiles-"

"Like my dad? Hello, orphan, in foster-care, of the people who literally kicked my ass-"

"You’re here because I wanted to _help_ you, Stiles. That's it, I promise. As long as you're here, you're as safe as you can be. Lydia is just... beside herself wanting to know you're okay. Scott has been worried about you all summer. Nobody ever knows where you are-"

"Yeah, _on purpose,_ " replied Stiles. "I kinda figured out that I need to stay away from the people who are gonna get my ass kicked if I want to stay alive until my eighteenth birthday now. No more home. No more car. The stuff I used to, you know, _need_ in order to _not die_."

"Now you have the home, okay? You're safe here."

Stiles scoffed. "Right."

Allison nodded sincerely, pointed behind her toward the hallway. "Look, the door locks, okay? And if you want, I'll go with you to get another lock for it-"

"I can't afford it."

"Fine, _I'll_ buy one. And I'll go downstairs with you. Okay? I promise, you're safe here, and I'll prove it," Allison said. "We can go get breakfast, and you'll see. You're okay here. My parents even want you here, so they know you're safe."

Stiles scowled at the floor. Talk of food was making him impossibly hungry. Allison reached out and caught his hand under hers.

"I know you don't see it, and I get why, but... my parents are the good guys, too. They're doing what they do in order to keep me - and you - safe," she said. Stiles scoffed. "No, really. I'm trying to change things, Stiles. Now that I know how things work, I can start to do that. It's just a slow process. Scott's helping..."

"Yeah, I know he is," said Stiles darkly. He had been standing next to Derek, listening as Scott outlined how much he had been helping the Argents, the night the hunters blew up the sheriff’s station, trying to kill a kanima, that Derek had to take out without their help anyway.

The thing of it was, Stiles was stuck there. He had already tried to run away from four foster homes. It never worked. And now he was stuck with the Argents, who had chased him down and kicked his ass multiple times over the last two years, not caring at all that he was the sheriff’s kid. And now he wasn't even that. Stiles was low on options. And he was hungry. All he needed was a roof and food and a bathroom and he could make it a year. Argent said he was going to get Stiles into online classes, so maybe he could finish school early, get some kind of free ride to college somewhere far away and never have to deal with any of this shit again. It would just mean he never left the Argents' house.

And if he never left, they wouldn't be as inspired to kick his ass.

Stiles Didn't Like It. But it would keep him fed for another year. He reluctantly nodded and let Allison take his hand.

"Fine," he said. "But I only go downstairs when you're there. So tell me when you go."

"Or you could text me when you need to, I dunno, find food?" Allison said, standing and dragging him with her.

"I don't have a phone. It got smashed the night I met your basement." Just because he was staying there didn’t mean he wasn't going to apply _Guilt_. He would just have to text Derek and Lydia later to thank them for not telling the others about Derek giving him the burner phone. And make it clear they weren’t allowed to. Ever.

"Oh. We thought you were just avoiding us," Allison said, her brief smile fading again. Stiles shrugged and almost felt bad. Stupid female sad faces.

"Well, that too, but no phone makes the avoiding part easier."

Allison opened the door for him and bodily pushed him out of the room.

*~*~*

There was a kerfuffle at the coffee carafe in the kitchen after breakfast. Stiles had survived the table without saying anything that would get him killed, and Chris' attitude toward him had cooled off. He had been assured that breakfast at the table was not a usual occasion, but dinners were. He was expected to come down for dinner, Victoria reminded him, politely firm.

And now the woman stood in her kitchen, catching Stiles in the act of pouring coffee into a mug. As if he planned to commit the crime of drinking it

"Ms. Walker said you had ADHD," Mrs. Argent said. Stiles blinked over at her.

"Yeah?"

She pointed at the coffee. "Aren't you on medication? Those don't mix."

Stiles shrugged and shook his head, put the coffee pot back. "I haven't been on medication for it for, like, months. I stopped everything when Dad died. You have to kinda have a schedule, and mine has been all over the place."

"You should get back on them," said Victoria, not unkindly. "While you're here, you should set a schedule and give yourself a chance. Maybe it will save your grades next year. Get you into a good school."

Stiles scoffed at that. "If I take the ADHD medicine, I _won't_ pass the drug tests and they'll throw me in Eichen."

Victoria frowned. She took the coffee mug from him, before he had even gotten a taste of any of it, and poured it back in the pot. Then she opened the cupboard above the coffee maker and showed him a colorful selection of tiny tea boxes.

"Stay out of the coffee and switch to these," she instructed him. She pointed at the kettle on the stove behind him. "It's just as quick, and it's better for you. The coffee is for Chris."

Stiles frowned at the orders but was just enough afraid of Victoria not to argue as he would have with any of his other foster-whatevers over the last few months. The coffee was Chris' though, so that was at least a logical boundary he could avoid. He could get Derek to buy him coffee of his own and get around on a loophole.

"Okay?" he said, not sure how to extract himself from the kitchen then. Victoria grabbed a box - it said ‘caffeine’ right on the label - and put it in his hand before moving around to the stove to check the kettle and start water to boil. Stiles sagged against the countertop to wait since she obviously wasn't going to let him off the hook.

Five minutes later he had a mug of tea and escaped with it upstairs to his room. He had done the socializing Allison had demanded of him and he needed to go rage-quit at Derek about it. But he had survived. No one had mentioned the basement or even looked at the door while he was around. And Victoria did seem to be trying to look out for him. He just didn't want her to. He wanted coffee, damn it.

The tea sat on the corner of his desk to get cold, forgotten until later in the afternoon. Derek’s cell phone buzzed in the front pocket of his backpack all afternoon and Stiles ignored it because it was Lydia, and he hadn’t replied to her texts in over a week. There wasn't much point. Stiles had nothing good to say about any of her friends, especially while locked up in a bedroom with no coffee.

*~*~*


	5. Chapter 5

The next time Stiles ventured out of his room without Allison to run interference was a day later. And that time it was Chris Argent who caught him in the kitchen going after the coffee pot. The man cleared his throat with a cough to announce his presence and Stiles glared at the ceiling for the apparent cosmic conspiracy to deprive him of caffeine. He set the carafe back on the warmer and pretended he hadn't been about to steal coffee before half-turning to see the man standing in the doorway.

"Morning, Stiles," Chris said.

"Yeah, think it is now," replied Stiles. He reached for the tea cupboard and suppressed a sigh. Chris moved into the room and started messing with cabinets as Stiles faked his way through pretending he knew how their stovetop worked.

"Allison says you don't have a phone," said Chris.

"Yeah," replied Stiles. "I broke it the night I spent in the basement here."

"That's a long time without a phone," said Chris, ignoring the effort at guilt-tripping. He found a travel mug and poured out coffee. Stiles side-eyed the precious brew. He set the tea kettle on the burner, shrugged his shoulders rather than say anything else about his phone.

Argent set the filled travel mug in front of Stiles and stepped around him to turn off the stove burner. "Fix your coffee. We're going to get you a phone."

Stiles' jaw dropped slack and he stared, first at the coffee and then at Chris. "Wait, really?"

"What did I just say?" Chris replied.

"That I could have coffee and a new phone," said Stiles. Chris nodded.

"Sounds like what I said," the hunter replied. "Why aren't you moving?"

And Stiles moved fast to fix his coffee and drink from it before it could be taken from him again. He left his stuff in his room and he and his travel mug followed after Chris to the garage. It was bizarre, voluntarily climbing into the passenger's seat of the Argent SUV, rather than being dumped in the rear hatch like luggage. He wasn't sure it was real, except for the too-hot coffee in the mug in his hands reminding him that heat and smell were definitely a contributing factor to his current perception of reality.

"You’re really going to buy me a phone?" Stiles asked, confused. "I wasn't just bought off with coffee as an excuse to drag me out to the woods and get chopped in half or something?"

"I shouldn't even dignify that with a response, Stiles," said Argent. "We only chop murderers in pieces. Surprisingly you haven't added that one to your resume yet. Unless coffee drags confessions from you, in which case, drink up. Saves me the cost of a phone."

Ah, Hunter Humor™. Stiles was in for the good times, now.

Stiles offered a fake effort at a smile and let it fade away. He could have a phone he could play games on, and maybe feel normal again, and all he had to do was shut up. So he did.

He shut up and sat there and kept quiet in the car and quiet in the store and he didn't let anybody touch the phone once the guy at the store brought it out to them. Another iPhone, with read-receipts enabled on the text messages. It was on the Argents' account so they could track it, they would know where he was when he had the phone with him if they wanted to be jerks about it. Stiles felt tracked and trapped, but he had a phone with a search engine on it again. Data plan supposedly good enough for school. Stiles' grades had tanked so hard after his dad died that he had forgotten school existed until Chris mentioned it to the sales guy. School was a month away.

"You have to make up credits," Argent told him. "Ms. Walker was going to set you up with online make-up courses. You still have school. This week."

Stiles scowled and shoved the new phone in his pocket. And they picked up a school computer for him after that. New notebooks and pens and highlighters. It was a regular _Back To School shopping_ trip.

"That should keep you busy for a few days," Argent said as they walked back into the house, Stiles carrying bags of new stuff. He felt like it was fake somehow. Free stuff that he maybe needed but didn't want. The excitement of a new computer wasn't there at all.

Stiles still went up to his room and unpacked everything. Allison started pinging the new phone with text messages within a half an hour. She wanted to give the number out and Stiles told her not to share it with anyone, not even Lydia. He thought the matter was settled and stood in front of his window, about to go out to sit on the roof and text Derek, when the girl showed up at his door.

"What do you mean I can't give out your number?" Allison asked. She sounded distressed about it. "That was why we got it for you."

"I mean, _don't_ give it out. I don't want everybody in my face. I don't want to deal with it," said Stiles, annoyed despite himself. _How was this hard?_

"But we're your friends, Stiles..."

"That doesn't mean I'm over any of it," said Stiles. "Look, I can't help with anything. I can barely keep up with homework I didn't even know I was supposed to do. I have other shit I have to worry about. Okay? When I get over it, I'll ask for numbers or something. But don't hold your breath."

Allison frowned at him and pulled back. "So... leave you alone."

"That would be great," said Stiles. "I am tapped out."

He wasn't trying to be an asshole about it, but he had spent all day on high-alert and he was just barely not shaking, too many things in his face. All day waiting for the other shoe to fall with Chris Argent and it didn't, and then when he got time to himself, Allison showed up, wanting to shove Scott at him. No way. He couldn’t do it.

Allison slipped away more quietly than she had appeared and Stiles climbed out onto the roof where he could breathe. It was sunny and hot and the air baked off the shingles in little waves but Stiles could breathe there, propped up against the brick chimney where no one would think to look for him. He had the new phone in his pocket, but he texted Derek on Derek's phone to tell him about the new stuff. Derek's reply was hilariously predictable.

_ never text me from that one

Stiles riffed off his sour-predictability for a few replies off that. But it did get him thinking. So just in case somebody went snooping in his new phone, he programmed Lydia and Scott’s numbers in, by memory, even his old home phone number, and his dad’s old direct line at the station. It looked _normal_. Aside from the three programmed phone numbers at the top of the list, all of them under _A_ for _Argent_. And then he programmed the new phone with the local number for Eichen House and put it under the name ID: _Derek Hale._

Stiles was proud of himself so he told Derek what he had done and sent a picture of the phone screen to him. Derek was quick to reply.

_ funny.  
_ i've still never been there.  
_ good for vacations?

Stiles sighed at the screen and typed out _F U c K Y o U_ one letter at a time in seven individual text messages for it.

*~*~*

Online summer school classes weren't terrible, but Stiles had absolutely nothing better to do with his time anyway. Over the first week with the Argents, he turned into a hermit and hardly left his room except for meals, as mandated by the adults.

Allison was the only one who seemed to have a problem with the arrangement, which didn't make Stiles feel very friendly toward the hunters' overall intentions. But he still refused to leave the house whenever Allison invited him somewhere. He knew it would end up somewhere near Scott and he didn't want to risk it. Stiles had no choice but to tolerate the Argents, but Scott’s presence was still a solid _option_ , never a guarantee. And he didn't want it. So he made himself scarce when she was likely to be home and snuck out on walks to absolutely nowhere, or he just stayed in his room, or climbed out on the roof over his room at night.

The Sunday after Stiles showed up, Gerard paid a visit to his dear granddaughter and Stiles bolted his bedroom door. He even sat against it to make sure nobody tried to visit. He texted Allison and told her not to even try, but thanked her for buying the deadbolt two days earlier. He was _pissed off_ , but he _was_ thankful.

Stiles refused to go down for dinner that night because he didn't believe Gerard had really left the house. And he didn't want to be around the Argents after listening to their awkward attempts at family socializing. Victoria and Gerard got along fine, and their voices carried loudly up the stairs and down the hall. Allison and Chris raised their voices a few times, but it wasn't anything that made sense to Stiles.

When it became clear that Gerard wasn't leaving, Stiles stuffed his laptop - the one his dad bought him - in his backpack with a clean shirt and snuck downstairs and out through the front door. He hopped on his bike and got the hell away. He tried going to his dad's house first, but it really had been boarded up that time. So, plan C was Derek’s place, because he knew the hunters were too busy to notice.

Derek wasn't surprised to see him, not when Stiles had texted him about Gerard's arrival hours earlier. He just let him and his bike in.

"So is the old freak still coughing up ash?" Derek asked.

"Still coughing, but who knows if there’s ash," said Stiles. He shrugged. "I skipped dinner so I wouldn't have to see him. Strangely wasn't feeling social."

He stashed his bike in the corner with the other stuff he had ferreted away to the relative safety of the loft. Derek pointed at the urn on the desk.

"Scott recognized that last week," he said. Stiles looked over at him, surprised.

"What'd you tell him?" he asked. Derek shrugged.

"The truth. So in case Allison starts to bug you more, it was probably that."

"What the hell did you do that for?"

"Because they still think you'll get back to the pack before school starts again," replied Derek.

Stiles glared at him for it. "Well, stop helping them. Because I'm not."

"Scott’s an idiot and I don’t think he knew what he was doing. He didn't know it was going to blow back on you like it did. And he says you always come back."

"Yes he is, and he did, and I won't," returned Stiles. Not this time. "Unless you give me the bite, in which case, fine, bring it on, I'll need other idiots to survive, won't I?"

Neutral expression gone, Derek rolled his shoulder and turned away to crash on the couch as an excuse to turn his back on Stiles.

"I'm ordering a pizza," Stiles announced.

"Who's paying for it?" Derek replied, a very intentional reminder that Stiles was broke. Stiles camped out on the floor with his laptop and glared up at Derek.

" _You are_ , asshole. Stop trying to make me talk to Scott."

Derek sat on the couch and took a long drink from his soda to finish it off as he considered the retaliatory strike. Then he nodded. "Fair."

*~*~*

The Alpha problem was not going away. They went quiet for a few weeks at a time, but they never left town. It was playing hell with Derek’s patience because he knew they were sneaking around, knew they were cornering the others at random. Scott had a contact helping him get news, somehow, but he wouldn't tell Derek much.

Deucalion hadn’t gone after Derek yet, but he had started out the summer locking up Cora and Boyd, and Kali picked random places around town to just show up. Sometimes they didn't do anything other than make themselves visible, watching. Other times, they kicked the ass of whoever they could get their claws on. And Alphas left scars. They were all there.

Boyd still looked for Erica, but the rest of them had given up. There was no way she had survived so long. Scott didn't want to keep looking for her, and Derek was trying to back his calls, since that's where Isaac, Boyd, and Cora had all signed up, for what it was worth to them.

Peter lurked around the loft and eavesdropped a lot, made sure to weigh in on how much of an idiot Scott was and _what exactly did that make_ Derek _for helping him_? Derek couldn't _exactly_ say he was wrong, but a pack was a pack, and Peter was still six crayons short of a full box. Family was important, but Derek realized he couldn't trust his own family any more than he could trust Scott; they all turned on each other too quickly, there was actual blood on all of their hands, and Peter had killed Laura to start it all off. Revenge was never far from Peter's agenda, and survival was still on Derek's.

But Derek wasn't _pack_ to Scott or the others, and he knew it. He didn’t want to be. He just wanted to be alive when he woke up in the morning. If Scott could be mercenary with pack, then Derek could learn from the same school.

Stiles complicated that plan, because the pack wanted _him_ back, and the hunters weren't letting him go, and Derek had placed himself as some kind of island in the middle. Scott didn't trust him to start with, and finding out the Stiles still did just made that worse. And whenever Gerard felt like it, the hunters had a bounty on Derek's neck that Scott would collect on out of spite just because Stiles still talked to him.

But Stiles had surprised the hell out of him by declaring him a friend, out loud, and Derek accepted it as truth and tried to hold up his end of it. He hadn't actually had a friend in so long, and Stiles did seek him out like one, a sharp contrast to everyone else, when even his little sister came back hating him. Cora liked Stiles well enough, though, and when she walked in to the loft to find Stiles half way through a box of pizza playing Warcraft, the only reason she didn't report it back to Scott was that Stiles specifically asked her not to.

"I'm just hiding from Gerard. I'll be gone in an hour. I don't want... drama," he told her, as he crashed a digital sword down on an orc. And that worked very well with Cora's attitude toward life in general, so she helped herself to pizza and then disappeared to her own corner of the loft.

And when Stiles showed up a few days later, ostensibly for the same reason as before, she helped him with some Spanish homework and again decided not to rat him out. But Scott still found out about it. Which meant Allison found out about it.

Even Lydia found out about it, and she showed up to poke him in the chest and demanded to know why Stiles was avoiding her. And all Derek could tell her was he didn't know.

"Allison told me he got a new phone," Lydia said. "What’s the number?"

"I don't know it. He just shows up here, like _everybody else_ ," Derek replied, annoyed but glad for a loophole. "Like, say, _you_. With the poking fingers."

Lydia snapped her fingers at him instead. "Give. Me. The. Number."

Derek pulled his phone out of his pocket, pulled up Stiles' name, and showed her the number he had, which was the same one she had. That seemed to work. But Lydia went back to texting him randomly after that, with orders to give her the number, or to tell Stiles to text her. Neither of which he did.

Being Stiles' apparent gatekeeper was not a good way to make friends in Scott’s pack, when they still thought themselves Stiles' pack, not his. But Stiles still texted him, still called him, still made himself a very present _pain in the ass_ friend, even when he was locked up in his room in a hunter’s house.

After the third time Stiles snuck out of the Argents' and showed up at Derek’s place, after weeks of Stiles living with the Argents, Chris Argent tracked Derek down, just like Stiles' pack had done. He didn't help himself to the loft, though if he tracked Stiles' phone at all he probably knew where it was. No, Argent cornered him in a parking lot, like he seemed to prefer. After months of random attacks from Alphas, it was almost a relief to see it was just Argent.

"What do you want?" Derek asked, not in a mood for more polite charades. Cora was making noise about leaving town again, and it was making waves that Derek had to go deal with. "Is this a Gerard thing?"

"Gerard thing?" Chris asked, almost amused.

"Yeah, do I have to worry about _my neck_ right now? Or can I go deal with the rest of my day?" replied Derek.

"The order to leave you alive still stands," said Chris. Apparently he was in a good mood. "But I'm fully prepared to revoke it."

Derek held his arms out. "I haven't done anything. None of us have. It's the _Alphas_."

" _This_ is about Stiles," said Argent. "I told you to leave him alone."

"And I told you you were gonna screw it up with him. And you have, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation," replied Derek. He walked boldly up to the hunter, not about to stand around talking loudly in public about Stiles Stilinski. "I _have_ left him alone. He shows up on my doorstep to get away from you. But he hasn't run away again. Like the last _four_ foster homes. Trust me, that's not a testament to your stellar parenting."

"He's safe with us-"

"Yeah? He doesn't think so. That's where you fail. He'll track me down instead of listen to either of us tell him he's safer there," said Derek. "So your way doesn't work."

"My way?"

"Yeah, locking him up in his room? Showing up here because he dared leave the house to go somewhere else? _Your way_. He's going to end up just as angry and violent as Allison. He needs his friends if he's going to get over this, and you aren't letting him."

"His choice of friends make him a target."

"Your family breaking their code made that happen."

"Alphas made that happen."

“No! Kate did. Gerard did.“ The denial was infuriating, for so many reasons, and Derek crossed his arms to keep himself from reacting and provoking a fight. Argent wanted the excuse otherwise he wouldn’t have tracked him down, and Derek wasn’t going to walk into it. "And Stiles knows that and he's scared of you and maybe _even_ Allison, waiting to get tossed in the basement again, and that's not on _us_. So let him just do what he wants! You don't make Allison stay locked up."

Argent shrugged it off. "That's his choice."

"That's bullshit."

"If something happens to him, my family is responsible. And the death of the sheriff is bad enough. Alright?" There was at least a shred of honesty to that answer and Derek stared at the hunter, considering it,

"Fine. Then let him go places and ask him to check in. That's not hard. Just a text message. Then you know nothing happened. And you can back off."

Chris glowered at him but didn't say anything and Derek unfolded enough to wave vaguely toward the SUV that blocked in his car. Tracking Derek down because the grapevine said that Stiles talked to him was not helping any of them maintain their sanity.

"Come on! He's still a kid, not some soldier like Gerard is turning Allison into. You're gonna screw him up worse than he already is."

And something seemed to click for Argent then. The anger in his face shifted just a little. He held out his hand.

"Fine. Give me your phone."

"Why."

"Because the next time he shows up at your place, _you're_ going to tell him to text me where he is. And you’re going to text me yourself whether he does or not."

"I'm not going to spy on him for you."

"No. You're going to make sure he's safe when he's not where we know about it. That's trying it _your way_. And if it doesn't work. Fine. We know how to deal with you."

"Gerard said hands-off," said Derek.

"There are plenty of ways to work within my father's expectations for your shelf-life, Hale."

And that was how Derek became texting buddies with Chris Argent. He had to go to another store when he left the parking lot, to get another burner phone. It was annoying. But it seemed to work. The next time Stiles showed up, Derek told him to let the Argents know when he left, and he did.

And Stiles started showing up more. More relaxed about it because he thought he was getting away with something. And because people had stepped off for a while and he only had to deal with Allison's family for mealtimes. Stiles was positively ecstatic when he found out the Argents were _paid_ to take care of him, because that meant he could _drink their coffee_ and they could shove it. Derek felt bad that it had taken him so long to figure out Stiles didn’t know that, but he was glad he got to be the one to pass along the info because Stiles lit up like a firecracker for the rest of the night after that.

And when some hunter went chasing after Derek, breaking up a fight with an Alpha, and he got shot with wolfsbane for it, Derek was able to call Stiles for help. Because nobody else would bother to respond to his texts. _Stiles_ answered his phone.

*~*~*

Derek had told him it was a bad idea. He had nailed it. And Stiles would _never_ tell him he was right. He just suffered through the interrogation and tried to keep his story straight.

"I told you, you don't know her."

Allison narrowed her eyes and caught his arm to make him stop walking. "Marie Rainer doesn't exist."

Stiles blinked at her, absolutely offended on behalf of his mythical girlfriend. "Excuse me?"

"I don't know anyone with that name, neither does Lydia, or Kira-"

"So?" Stiles crossed his arms and stared at her, letting the traffic on the sidewalk go around them. "Neither of you live in Corning. You wouldn't know her."

"Then how do you know her?" Allison smiled at him with the _gotcha_! face. Stiles shrugged it off. He had this part _down_.

"Her mom's a dispatcher at the department. Well, was. She was on shift that night, so... she retired early on disability."

Stiles Stilinski was a lying liar who lied and he didn't feel a damn bit bad about it as the smug smile faded off Allison’s face. And there were no werewolves around to catch him at it.

"Oh." was all Allison said.

"Can I go to class now?" Stiles asked. "Or do I have to answer questions about positions or something first?"

Allison scrunched her face and pulled back, sufficiently disgusted, as she shook her head and waved him away. Stiles walked off grinning to himself and figuring a minor win against one of his foster-whatevers was a good way to start off the school year.

He had been held back in history and science - two classes he skipped most often because of who he had to share breathing air with in those rooms - and they had switched his academic tracks around, so half his day was on campus and half was online only. He was guaranteed no overlap with werewolves because of it. And his first class of the day was going to be with Coach Finstock, which was always good for a laugh.

He hadn't counted on the class after that, however, being a potential problem. Stiles _hadn’t_ failed out of math, he scraped by with a passing grade, so he moved forward with everyone else. Including Lydia. Who was going to _murder_ him. Stiles sunk in his chair as she marched by him, claimed the chair next to his, and then smacked him repeatedly on the arm. Then she sat forward in her chair and pulled out her notes.

" _Answer me_ when I text you," she ordered, her tone sweet and polite to belie the beating.

"I've been busy?" Stiles tried. Lydia just flat out _leveled_ him with a glare.

Stiles was saved from a tiny pointed shoe kicking his ass after class by the school nurse paging him into her office before class was out. It was a not-a-surprise _surprise_ drug test, because obviously orphans with drug problems pre-loaded before the first day of school to handle the stress. Stiles just shrugged it off and took the hall pass to go back to his next class, since it had kindly gotten him out of dealing with the screwed-up leftovers of his social life.

Stiles made himself scarce at lunch, fully intending to starve until he got back to the Argents' after school. It wasn’t like he had to walk or anything. Since he had a short day thanks to his IEP, he would be getting picked up by Chris, and it had been made perfectly clear that they would call in the National Guard if he wasn’t waiting in front of the school on time. Apparently his record of four foster homes in three months was too much of a flight risk to see himself home from school. Stiles disappearing toward the preserve at lunch probably served as a polite reminder of that, because Allison texted him to ask where he was. He replied that he had gone on a walk.

Lydia texted him on Derek’s phone and threatened to _tell_ Allison _about_ Derek’s phone if he wasn't back to school before the bell. Stiles texted her back that time, sending a picture of the lacrosse field. She was marching across it toward him three minutes later. She slid onto the bench beside him, a deep frown on her face, and she didn't say anything or smack him or anything. She just sat there, arms on her knees to mirror how he sat.

"What?" he asked. Lydia scrunched her nose and looked over at him.

"I don't think you're okay," she said, seeming to come to that conclusion all on her own, just then, off a few minutes of silence. Stiles looked out at the field toward the school, squinting in the sunlight and mentally swearing at the headache brewing.

"I don't think you're wrong," Stiles replied eventually. "Just don't make me deal with anybody else's shit anymore. I won't. I've got my own."

Lydia bit her lip and nodded. Then after a moment, she held out her hand, palm up to rest on his knee for him to take. "I’ll help. You can _text me_."

Stiles did take her hand, and she leaned on his shoulder. But he didn't text her much, except when she went looking for him. Allison was still her friend. And Lydia expected Scott to still be his friend. And Stiles hadn’t figured out how to tell her why he wasn't okay with either of them anymore.

The bad part about making friends with a _pack_ was that when he got burned by one of them, he lost them all, because no one would believe him. Lydia wouldn't understand what Stiles had heard and seen that night, what Scott and Allison had done. He couldn’t tell her. Especially not now, after the Argents had him living with them. Nobody would listen to him. So he lost everyone, even if they were all there, at school, wanting him to show up. They wouldn't _care_ enough to believe him. He wasn't even going to ask Lydia to. It would just bring a fight, and he didn't want another one.

So Stiles stuck it out with Derek. Derek believed him because he was there, because Scott and Allison had screwed him over, too. He was willing to move on because he had to. Stiles couldn't. He could live under the Argents’ roof because he had to, but he couldn't trust Allison or her family. Or her friends. That's why he had a door with a deadbolt on it. He was thinking about asking Derek for rope or something to make a ladder for emergencies.

It was why Stiles kept going back to Derek’s on the weekends once school got started. He got away from the people who hurt him, away from the people he had to lie to. He could just annoy Derek and be himself. And when Derek left to go do werewolf stuff, he just disappeared, and Stiles didn’t have to hear about it because he was playing something or other and Derek would just announce “Be back in a minute,” and then not show up again for a few hours.

Derek would usually come back looking messed up and sweaty, and he still smelled good, which just sent Stiles into the kitchen looking for something to eat so he wouldn’t _smell_ Derek. And then there was that time where he came back into the loft, crawled onto the couch, and took up as much of it as he could despite the fact that Stiles sat in the corner of it with a laptop in his lap. He just shoved the laptop over and curled up on his side with his head on Stiles’ thigh, and he fell asleep with his face buried in Stiles’ jacket at his hip, for the next three hours. Stiles had trouble _talking_ suddenly and found something to watch on headphones instead of trying to concentrate on gaming after that. It took him _three days_ to fully recover from those three hours at Derek’s loft.

Scott and Allison never showed up there. The only one other than Derek who showed up on purpose anymore was Peter, and that was because he lived there. But Stiles never felt inclined to ask him for the bite, and they kept to their own corners, and Stiles shared the couch with Derek just fine. He liked sharing the couch with Derek, a _lot_ , and he was still trying to figure _that_ out. But avoiding Peter at the loft was ten hundred percent better than sharing a lunch table with Scott or Allison.

*~*~*

Stiles had definitely developed his new routine. It was a surprise how much Derek had come to expect his own participation in that routine. Somehow they had gone from " _Stay Away, Stiles_!" to daily requests for a proof-of-life, and the automatic assumption that Stiles would show up before five pm Friday and not leave until four pm Sunday. It hadn't been an agreed upon transition, it had just happened and Derek wasn't going to ask about it in case it somehow changed the pattern.

Stiles seemed to be doing better, even though he still wasn't really on speaking terms with anyone in the pack other than Lydia, and Allison under duress. He smiled at the loft, but not as much when Derek met him at the old house for lunches every few days.

So when Friday rolled around a month into the school semester, Derek was expecting the text from Stiles declaring " _Freedom_!" at three and was home from his own errands shortly thereafter. The usual pattern didn't hold, though. Stiles didn't show up by his usual time. His last text said he had to try to get something from his house.

Sundown faded before Stiles showed up, which wasn't normal. He didn't like being out at night anymore, he had made that very clear, multiple times, in very colorful ways. Derek finally texted him to ask where he was. And he texted Lydia to ask if she had heard from him when there was no response after another half an hour.

Lydia herself showed up at Derek’s door. "Why are you looking for Stiles?"

Derek frowned at her. "Because I don't know where he is? Generally that's why someone asks..."

Lydia held up her phone and showed him a text message from Allison.

_ Stiles is gone. His bike is gone.  
_ Scott found his backpack by his house  
_ tell me he's with you.

Shit.

*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .... TBC in Drafted ...


End file.
